A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

  I wasn’t sure if the woman was coming back with lemonade or if saying Noveen’s name had already gotten us kicked out.

  The heap of blankets rustled, like they were so filthy they’d gone crackly, and the old man said, “You Liza’s kid? Liza Slocumb?” Patti shot him a dirty look for speaking to us just as she was about to glare us out the door, but he ignored her. “You look like a white kid to me. Your daddy a white man?”

  “I guess,” I said, and he actual y cackled, almost exactly like Big used to do when she read me Baba Yaga.

  “Don’t know for sure, heh? Wel , that does make you Liza Slocumb’s kid, don’t it?”

  I took an angry step toward him, but Roger put a hand on my arm, eyes alight and interested to have this ancient Duckins relic talking to us. “Liza and Noveen were real y tight, huh?” he asked.

  “Pah, thick as thieves, we thought. Noveen tooken her sleeping bag over there about ever’ weekend. Said she was camping out with Liza in her tree house. Camping. Shit. Up in that tree whoring, more like.”

  Patti said, “Maybe you better git. He’s gonna get al worked up.”

  The heap of rags seemed to straighten itself up in the recliner. “Shut that piehole, little girl!” he said. “You don’t boss and sass your elders. You can take a good lesson from Noveen. She got her whore self flat cut off, din’t she?” Being cut off from this family seemed to me like it might be a super plan, but Patti frowned and looked down at her bare feet. Now the old guy was upset, I could see it. Spittle flecks had foamed up in his mouth corners, and the whites were showing al the way around his eyes.

  “You see! You riled him,” Patti said to her feet. They were pale and clean, and I was surprised to see that her toenails were neatly painted pink.

  He was fussing on, not hearing her, looking me up and down with his eyes al shiny. “I thought sure Liza would fetch up a nigger baby, since Noveen found the only Chink in Mississippi and laid claim to him.”

  The mom lady came back in time to hear this. She was carrying a plastic pitcher and some Dixie cups, but she took one look at the old guy and set them down, just bent and plopped them right on the floor by the doorway.

  “Al right then, Daddy,” she said. To us she said, “Maybe you best come back another time.”

  “Or not,” Patti added.

  Roger and I started moving toward the door.

  “Why ain’t you a little half nigger? Your momma was even whorier than Noveen!” the old man cal ed after me.

  The mom lady was fol owing us. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man, and then she herded us al the way out onto the porch and pul ed the door shut behind her. Outside, the sky was very gray, but the rain had slowed down to a drizzle.

  I said, “I’m real y sorry.”

  “Naw,” she said. “I think Noveen is doin’ real good, you ask me. She married that boy what knocked her up, and she’s got a good job working for a dentist in Biloxi.”

  “What happened to the baby?” Roger asked, on mission.

  “Oh, he’s fine. Must be about your age now. He got her eyes, so that’s good. Though he’s a little brown, you ask me.”

  “She had a boy, then,” Roger said, disappointed, and even though I had never believed I was a Duckins, of al things, I couldn’t help but be relieved.

  “A half-Chinese boy, sounds like,” I said.

  “Daddy don’t real y mind coloreds, as long as they keep to theirselves and don’t go mixing blood,” she said, like this was total y reasonable.

  “Now, me, I don’t hold it against Noveen.” Then she added, “Don’t you mind what he said about your momma. Liza was a real sweet girl to Noveen, and anyway, you sure do look like your daddy was a white man.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m relieved to hear you think so, too,” Roger said, in the same Captain of the Boy Scouts voice he used on teachers to explain al his absences. “A white guy for sure. Probably. We hope.”

  She beamed at him, al benevolent, and I stepped down hard on his foot, grinding it while I tried to smile at her.

  The door opened, and Patti slipped out. In the moment it was open, I could hear the old guy stil yel ing the very bad N-word, over and over. Patti said, “I think he’s gonna need some Tylenol PM and a shot of Jack.”

  “Wel , shitbirds,” the mother said, stil real mild. She went inside.

  Roger said to Patti, “So Noveen stil lives—”

  “Who are you? You don’t even go to my school,” she interrupted. “So you can shut up. My cousin just cal ed and said you was at her mom’s house before, asking about Noveen and pretending to hunt me like we’s friends.”

  I swole up, trying to look indignant as best I could, which was not a lot because she had us dead to rights. “See if I come al the way out here next time you lose your book.”

  “Don’t do me no favors,” Patti said. “I think you tooken it on purpose, to come here and make fun and see my house. Asking about Noveen like some butter-eatin’ asshole, getting Grampa al foamed up.” I tried to answer, but she got louder, overriding me, saying, “You better get on off my porch before I kick your skinny, book-thieving whore ass, and that’s al .”

  “Come on, Mosey,” Roger said. I didn’t move. For the first time in my life, I was aching to actual y hit someone. I could see me just popping Patti right on her mad mouth. I thought, I can steal and lie pretty good—I bet I can fight, too, but Roger grabbed my arm and started pul ing me backward.

  “Yeah, that’s right, you better go,” Patti cal ed after us as Roger yanked me down the stairs. “And at least my mom ain’t a whore.” I tried to go back up the stairs then, which surprised me. People had said much worse about Liza, and it had never made me this mad before. Patti took a stampy step toward me, like she’d be happy enough to meet me halfway and get into it. Roger had to grab me with both hands and drag me down the cracked-up walkway.

  “Are you kidding me?” he hissed. I got a hold of myself. He was right. In sixth grade, one of the Duckins girls grabbed another girl’s hoop earrings and yanked them out, tearing through her lobes. Patti looked mad enough to scratch my eyes out, and who would have thought a Duckins would be so smart and see right through us?

  I turned with Roger, and we jogged off in the drizzle of remaining rain to the car, Patti glaring after us the whole way.

  “Oh, man, I feel kind of shitty now,” Roger said, shutting his door and rol ing up the window. “She thinks we came to make fun of her being so poor.”

  “She can go to hel ,” I said. I was stil mad about how they had talked about Liza, and used the N-word, and been altogether vile about Noveen’s mixed-race baby. Roger just thought it was funny, because no one would ever think of the Knotwoods, with their car dealership and their yearly Disney World cruise vacations, as poor white trash. My family lived in a crappish house with no money or husbands, and people like the Richardsons snooted down on us, comfortable believing that poor and having babies out of wedlock was the same thing as hateful and racist. They could do that because of folks like the Duckins, who were happy to live up to every cracker stereotype in the handbook and invent a few of their own, even worse.

  “She’s in hel already, Mose.” Roger started up the Volvo and did a three-point turn, heading back up Nickerjack toward home. “Maybe at school you can apologize and tel her we weren’t there spying on her.”

  “But I’m not sorry, and we were too spying,” I said.

  “But not to make fun. We were making sure you weren’t Noveen’s kid.”

  “As if,” I said, stil fuming. I turned away and stared out the side window.

  We were almost back to the first meadow we’d come to, where the auntie who had cal ed Patti to rat us out lived drunk and mean as whole crowds of snakes in her double-wide.

  “Stop the car,” I said.

  “No way,” Roger said.

  “Stop,” I insisted.

  “So you can go back and get your ass kicked?”

  “Roger, do not be stupid, and please can you stop the
damn car?”

  Roger shrugged and pul ed over. We’d already overshot the double-wide, and we came to rest on the shoulder by the woods. I unbuckled and bent down to get those wicked-looking wire clippers from the floorboards. I pushed my door open, and immediately I could hear that the dog was stil meep- ing. Roger started to turn the car off.

  I said, “You stay here.”

  “Oh, hel z no!”

  “Seriously. I need you to keep the car running.”

  He shook his head. “This bad idea is bad.” Stil , he didn’t turn the engine off.

  “Five minutes,” I said, and got out.

  I snuck up on the mobile home from behind, creeping through the woods that went al the way up to the wire fence. My heart had jacked itself up into my throat, pounding so hard it was like it was thumping at my gag reflex, but the sad meep-meep kept me moving forward. Screened by the trees, I took the wire clippers and I flat went after that fence with them, like it was the thing that cal ed my mom a whore. I had to work hard to clamp through the links, but it felt good to tear it open. Once I got the hang of how to work the leverage, it got easier. I was sweating into my damp clothes and breathing hard by the time I’d cut an opening big enough to slip through.

  I ran right up to the back of the double-wide to get out of sight of the windows. They didn’t have curtains or even cheap blinds. The mobile home itself hid me from al the trailers. I bent low and peered down under. The dog had crept from the steps to under the double-wide, in the middle. He’d come to see what I was doing, but he was tied up to the stairs and couldn’t get closer. His beep had stopped. He looked at me, head tilted, curious.

  I said, “Hey, buddy,” real y soft and sweet. At the sound of my voice, the poor thing wagged his tail. He didn’t look like any human alive had ever been anything but a complete douche to him, but he stil wagged.

  I got on my bel y and wriggled under to him. He could have bit my face off, but instead he watched with his tail swishing back and forth. I used the wire cutters to nip through the clothesline tied to his col ar, then wrapped him in the blanket. He let me. He probably should have weighed thirty pounds or so, for his size, but he wasn’t much more than skin and bones. I shimmied backward. He was mostly wrapped in the blanket, so I had to drag him. He let out a startled bark as I pul ed him off his feet.

  From inside, I heard that woman yel , “Shut the fuck up, Pogo!”

  The dog barked again, like he was answering her.

  I panicked and pushed his head down in the blanket, wrapping him up like it was a bag, and he started barking for real then, real y mad or scared or both.

  I jumped to my feet and threw the blanket ful of struggling dog over my shoulder like I was Santa and he was a squirmy bag of upset toys. I ran for the fence, whispering, “Shut up, I’m helping you.” Pogo clearly did not speak English, because he kept on barking and struggling and pawing at my back. I got to the fence and scraped my arm open pretty good trying to get through the slit toting the blanket ful of panicking dog and the clippers.

  Behind me I heard the mobile home’s front door bang open, and the woman started cal ing, “Pogo? Damn it, Pogo?” I took off through the woods with her yel ing, “Pogo? Hey, Pogo?” behind me. She must have heard his barks fading off and away.

  “Shut up, shut up,” I hissed as I reached the car and leaped in, yel ing, “Go go go!”

  “Tel me you did not,” Roger said. But he threw the car into drive and jammed his foot down.

  I set the angry blanket on the floorboards and dug in the folds until Pogo got his head out.

  “I couldn’t leave him,” I said. “Liza never would have.”

  Pogo shut up once his head was free. He sneezed twice, then flopped in a misery heap stil half in the blanket, like he didn’t much care about whatever might happen next. I reached to give him a reassuring pat and saw that his thin fur was crawling with so many fleas they were practical y a mat. “Oh, vile.”

  Roger looked where I was looking and said, “Awesome. Those things wil be al over my car in thirty seconds. Should I go by the pound or what?”

  I said, “No! Maybe a vet? His name is Pogo. I’m total y keeping him.”

  Roger snorted. “Seriously? Wel , rol the windows back down. He smel s like someone ate him and then pooped him out.”

  I nodded, turning the crank. “Or puked him up.”

  Roger eased off the gas as we got closer to Immita. “Big is going to kil you.”

  I shrugged. “Big doesn’t real y have a say. She and I aren’t even real y, like, related.”

  Roger shook his head and kept driving, but he also kept stealing little peeks at me. He said, “Man, Mosey. Who are you?”

  I laughed and put one hand outside the window, pushing at the wind and feeling the wind push back. “Not a Duckins,” I said.

  That made him smile, and I smiled, too, even bigger, because who I was stil and probably forever was a thing that only Liza knew.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Big

  A YEAR AFTER Liza and Mosey came home, I caught sight of Lawrence when I was stocking up at the Sam’s Club in Gulfport. He was pushing a cart piled high with juice boxes and family-size frozen lasagnas. My feet stopped dead, but at the same time I felt my inside self leap forward, sweeping toward him like I was made of wind. Then I saw Sandy. She was ahead of him, letting the boys get sample sherbet at the end of a frozen-food aisle.

  She looked tired, and I hated her because the tired didn’t stop her being pretty.

  I barreled backward into Liza, practical y giving poor little Mosey whiplash as I jerked the cart out of sight, back into the cereal aisle.

  “Big, what the hel ?” Liza said as I shoved the cart past her.

  I didn’t even correct her for cussing in front of our preschooler. I trotted halfway down the aisle and started hurling box after box of Honey Nut Cheerios into the cart.

  “Wannit,” Mosey said, reaching. Shades of baby Liza asking for the Gulf of Mexico, but then she smiled her sunny Mosey smile and said,

  “Please!” while she opened and closed her starfish hands at me. The box had a maze on it that Buzz the Honey Bee had to navigate to get to a picture of a healthy breakfast. I handed her a box and dumped another in the cart.

  Liza stayed at the mouth of the aisle, scanning, and then she turned toward me with the ghost of her old up-to-no-good smile growing. I owed the dentist a chunk, but it was worth it to see that smile again. She was close to getting her first-year pin from NA, and she’d bounced a long way back from the hard living she’d done on the road. The glow was returning to her pale gold skin, and her hair was thick and bright as new pennies. She came sauntering down the aisle to join me, hips swaying.

  Mosey was absorbed in tracing Buzz’s route with her finger, and Liza leaned in close to me and murmured, “Yum. Two thumbs up. Who is he?” in a conspirator’s tone.

  “Did you see the price on this?” I said, too loud, putting two more boxes in.

  Liza’s lip quirked, and she whispered, mock pitiful and wheedling, “Talking about boys makes me want the meth less.”

  My cheeks were so hot that I knew I must be glowing like cranberry glass. I fixed Liza with my sternest mother gaze and put two more boxes in. “A lot of things make you want the meth less. Borrowing my shoes, holding the remote, not doing the dishes.”

  Liza laughed and nodded. “Yup. Is that his wife, and do you real y want al this bee cereal?”

  “Yes,” I said, and began wheeling the cart away.

  “Yes to wife or yes to bee cereal?”

  “Yes to bee!” Mosey said, triumphantly lofting her box, and that, at last, shut Liza up. At least until we got home and Mosey was playing dol s in the den. Then Liza came into the kitchen where I was trying to figure out where to store fourteen boxes of Cheerios and leaned on the counter, ankles crossed.

  When she spoke, it was like she was picking up in the middle of an old conversation, but it wasn’t one she’d had with me. “Couple weeks back
I did some stuff with Denny Wilkerson.”

  I stopped putting things away and wheeled to face her. Denny Wilkerson was over thirty years old, not to mention married. “What do you mean,

  ‘did some stuff’? How much stuff?”

  “Not all the stuff,” Liza said. “But a lot of stuff. I needed something, you know? There’s al these things I’m not al owed to have.”

  “Yes, and he is one of them,” I said, fierce.

  “Exactly. Something I can’t have. But not the worst thing on the list.” She was meeting my eyes dead-on, confessional but not al that sorry. She looked so young, and I wanted to take her by her stil -frail shoulders and shake her until some sense got in. Her honesty was a mother trap, catching me wanting her to be able to talk to me, and yet, Lordy, never wanting to hear about her climbing on Denny Wilkerson looking for something to fil up the hole she had inside of her. I counted ten in my head, reminding myself that I’d helped to make that hole. She’d grown up with no father, no grandparents or cousins or kindly aunties, no community of wacky, warm, closer-than-family friends that people on TV seem to find so easily. No church, and in smal -town Mississippi that had surely limited her social life. Al she’d had was me, too young and dumb to know how to discipline her. I didn’t even know where to look for support. Not that I would have. I’d been too busy proving to my parents I could do it al on my own, so busy I hadn’t even noticed they weren’t watching.

  When I thought I could answer in a quiet, calm way, I said, “If you need something, go to a meeting. Cal me, or cal your sponsor.”

  She shot me an impatient look, like I’d completely missed the point. “I’m tel ing you that whatever you did with Mr. Sam’s Club, it happened. You could talk to me. I’d get it. I’m the last person who would judge you.”

  Al at once I could feel a headache coming on. “Are you trying to have girl talk? About Denny and—Liza. No. That man in the Sam’s Club, it was not like that.”

  “So you’re saying that wasn’t Mrs. Sam’s Club and her cubs?” she scoffed.