“There she blows,” said Florence. “You think she’s just sleeping hard? Or do we need to ipecac her or make her take milk?”
I sighed. “Let’s watch her for a minute. I had forgotten this part.”
We squatted on the floor on either side of Mama, looking at each other across her legs.
“Why’d you send him off?” Florence asked. “Because I had a hissy at breakfast yesterday morning?”
“I guess I thought if you wanted to talk to me alone so bad that you’d come creeping into my room at night, I ought to let you.”
Florence said, “You came up the walk as ticky as a cat. Something else decided you.”
Before I could answer, Mama’s mouth opened, and she let out a short, sharp burp, loud as a gunshot.
“Crap!” said Florence. She reached around the back of Mama’s chair and pulled out a bucket. “Get her sitting up, Arlene. Get her head up!”
I grabbed Mama by the shoulders and flopped her forward. She was heavy with sleep, and her head lolled sideways and then rolled forward. One of her legs fell off the ottoman, and I was suddenly fighting two hundred pounds of deadweight, trying to keep her in the chair. Florence stuck the bucket between Mama’s knees and grabbed her other shoulder, and together we got her butt shoved back into the depths of the chair and bent her at the waist over the bucket. Once I had a grip on her, Florence used one hand to hold the bucket and the other to gather Mama’s hair backwards, off her face.
“You keep that behind her chair?” I said, looking at the bucket.
“I got tired of paying for Stanley Steemer,” Florence said. “Your mama is going to kill herself, Arlene. It’s just taking her longer than I think she planned on. Now, don’t look so hangdog guilty. She wouldn’t stop for you when you were little and needed a mama every minute, she sure isn’t going to do it now that you’re twenty-seven and don’t need a damn thing from any of us.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Mama jerked in my hands and released two more of those barking burps, and then she threw up thin green juice into the bucket Florence was holding. The smell was abysmal, like something evil you would meet in passing on the highway.
“Lordy my, oh crap,” said Florence, turning her face away.
“You have the foulest mouth of any Baptist Women’s League president in America,” I said.
“Oh, get off your horse, Arlene. Everybody craps.”
Mama answered her by throwing up again and then choking. She fought us weakly then, trying to rear back. I had to grab her head and push it down to keep her over the bucket. Florence let go of Mama’s hair and banged her hard on the back, sharp blows between her shoulder blades. Mama hawked and spit and then pulled a long, shuddering in-breath.
“I think that’s all she’s got,” said Florence. We eased her back into the chair.
“Arleney?” Mama said in a creaky voice. “’S that you, sugar?”
“Yeah, Mama, I’m here,” I said. Her head sagged sideways onto her shoulder, and she was out again, but her breathing was better. I could see the steady rise and fall of her chest. I picked up her foot and propped it back on the ottoman. The bare flesh of her ankle was smooth, and my fingers sank into it too easily. It felt like she had an inch-thick layer of Vaseline under the skin, and if I pressed too hard, the imprints of my fingers would remain, denting her.
Aunt Florence took the bucket into the kitchen. I followed her. “Your uncle Bruster put in a garbage disposal last year.” She dumped the bucket into the sink and ran the disposal, then scrubbed the bucket’s insides. I sat at the kitchen table and watched her. She had a can of orange-scented air freshener by the sink, and after the bucket was clean, she sprayed it all around until the air was so spiced with citrus and ammonia that it stung my throat and put a tickle in my lungs. She turned and faced me, leaning against the sink.
I said, “You shouldn’t have to do this. I should be the one taking care of her.”
Florence shook her head at me. “I don’t know why you would. You don’t owe her. She didn’t take much care of you when you were little, and that’s what makes kids think to turn it around when a person gets older. She’s good here with me. I know her ways, and I can be home with her.”
We couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes. “Where is Uncle Bruster?” I said. “I thought he’d beat us home.”
“He went for beers and wings with his working folks. The party tomorrow is going to be mostly family, so he’s having a last hurrah with his boys tonight.”
“So here we are, just the two of us. Why did you want to get me alone so badly, Aunt Flo? I’m all ears,” I said. I had intended to sound belligerent about it, but Mama had taken the wind out of my sails. Florence didn’t answer. She turned away from me and stared out the window over the sink. The kitchen faced the backyard, and when Clarice and I were children, we had played on the tire swing and the picnic table while Flo washed dishes and kept an eye on us through the window.
“Clarice said you didn’t want Burr and me to come to the party for Uncle Bruster. She said you were worried some of our folks would make a scene and ruin his day.”
Aunt Florence hunched her shoulders in what might have been a shrug. She said, “I thought about it. You know your aunt Sukie is in a snit. And all her boys. Her youngest one, Dale, is wild. He’s threatening an ass beating at the Quincy’s. All her boys blame him, that Burr, saying he’s got you hypnotized with black sex. Your uncle Justice and aunt Caroline are going to walk out if you show up, even if you show up all by your lonesome, just because they know he exists somewhere. That Caroline, she can’t resist having a drama.”
“What do you want, though?” I said. “I was going to go to the mat on this, but now you tell me what to do, because I quit caring five minutes ago. If you don’t want us to come, we won’t.”
She turned back around and met my eyes. Her mouth was turned fiercely down, and her eyes were narrowed, searching me. She clasped her big hands in front of her, worrying at her wedding ring. “Arlene, why are you pussyfooting around with this Quincy’s crap? Come or don’t. Do what you want, you always do. You know that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
I was surprised to hear her dismissing Bruster’s party so easily. I said, “You told Clarice that you wanted to talk to me about it, that you were really upset.”
Aunt Florence said, “I had to tell Clarice something, didn’t I?”
“If that’s not it, Aunt Florence, then I do not have a clue.”
“Yes, you do,” said Florence. “You know.” She ducked her head at me, a fierce sharp bob of a nod. “You know, and I know you know,” she said. Her hands turned her ring around and around, almost violently. “I need to know if you told him.”
I looked at her blankly. “Told who what?” I asked. “Burr?”
“Yes, Burr.”
I hated the way she said his name. Every time she said it, it was like she had quotation marks around it. She said it the way you would say someone’s alias once his real identity had been exposed.
“Aunt Florence, I am telling you for the last time, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Her eyes were piercing, searching me, and I could see anger welling up, filling them to the brim. “Excuse me, I forgot again how stupid you think I am,” she said, her voice low and trembling with an icy rage. “I forgot you been up there in your big city getting all them degrees, and you think I’m ignorant and don’t see nothing. But you got your smarts somewhere, girl, and it wasn’t from those Fleets who don’t have three brain cells to rub together between every one of them. Fleets are sweet-natured but dim as pre-dawn rocks. You may look like one of them, but inside, you are purely Bent, Arlene. You don’t have a sweet bone in your body, nor a stupid one. You’re smart as a whip and devious with it. Don’t you forget, I’m a Bent, too. And I know, I know, why you left home. And I know why you haven’t been back in ten years. I know. Do you hear me? And what I need to know now is, did you tell him. Did you tell your hu
sband why you left here and didn’t come back.”
My mouth had gone dry. I was terrified that she really did know, but it didn’t seem possible. No one knew but God, no one. I shook my head at her.
“Don’t you doubt me, girl. Do I need to say his name?”
I stared at her, hard, and then nodded.
Aunt Florence swallowed, and it sounded like her throat had gone as dry as mine. When she spoke, it came out in a hoarse, husky whisper. “Jim Beverly,” she said. “There, it’s said. I was there. I came after you, as you damn well know, so quit your lying. Between us, at least.”
I struggled to breathe. The air was acidic with the smell of oranges, sweet and cloying, and yet it scraped like razors down my throat.
“Did you tell that husband of yours? Did you tell him?”
I shook my head no.
A bit of the tension ebbed out of Florence then, and she nodded at me, twice, my sudden co-conspirator. “Don’t you get stupid and tell him,” she said. “Don’t you trust him thataway.”
“I do trust him,” I said.
She snorted. Before I could answer, the front door opened, and I heard Burr calling, “Lena?”
I couldn’t look away from Aunt Florence. “You came after me?” I said. I was studying the strength in her tall, spare frame. Even now, past fifty, she had a lean hardness to her. She could have pulled his body out of there, pushed away the clinging fingers of the kudzu, dragged it straight up to the top of the hill, and taken it away somewhere. She was capable of it. She was capable of anything. “I thought it was God. I thought God took him out of there,” I whispered.
“Maybe it was,” hissed Florence. “You don’t know how God works. Maybe I was His instrument.”
“Lena?” Burr called. He was in the hallway, checking the bedroom.
I whispered back, half panicking, “That winter I went up on Lipsmack Hill all by myself. I had prayed and prayed, and he was just gone. I thought it was a miracle.”
We could hear Burr crossing the den, so she could not answer me. In another moment the swinging door opened, and he entered. It seemed odd to see him so himself, easy and unchanged, when my whole world had gone sliding sideways.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “Look what they had at the Shell station.” He held up a three-pack of York peppermint patties, a favorite of mine, and then said, “Heads up,” and tossed them to me. They sailed over my shoulder and smacked into the back door, falling to the floor.
Burr seemed to take in the scene then. I saw him register how stiff and still Aunt Florence was standing. He looked at my hands, gripping the table so hard they had gone dead white.
“Okay,” he said. “Do I need to go get more gas?”
“Get me out of here,” I said. I stood up. I had been clutching the edge of the table so tightly that it was physically painful to let go.
“Arlene,” said Florence in a warning tone.
“No,” I said. I held up one hand to silence her and was surprised to see how steady it was. “Burr, you get me out of here.” I started walking, fast, sure he was following me, and halfway through the house, I was running. I passed Mama without a glance, ran out the door of the den into the entryway, and burst free into the yard, where the air had oxygen in it and I could finally get a breath. I ran to the Blazer and was in and buckled before Burr caught up. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the Blazer. As he was backing out, he said, “Where are we going?”
“Away,” I said. He took a left out of the drive and that seemed to me to be the right way to go. After a mile or so, I told him to take another left, and after I gave the direction, I realized where I was taking him. We were heading towards Lipsmack Hill.
I couldn’t get my head around what Florence had told me. Where had she taken the body? And why? Why had she done it? You don’t cover up murders for people, even relatives. The only person you might take that kind of risk for would be your husband or your wife, or of course your own child. But maybe that made sense, then. Maybe, like me, she had done it for Clarice.
“Where are we going, Lena?” Burr asked again.
“I’m taking you somewhere I used to go when I was a kid,” I said.
“What happened with you and Florence?”
I didn’t answer. I was staring out the passenger-side window, looking for the turn. The side road that led to Lipsmack was dirt and hard to see. We almost hurtled right past it, but at the last moment I saw it and yelled, “There. Turn right!” Somehow Burr made the turn.
The whining drag of the branches against the Blazer made my teeth grind, and Burr was wincing for his paint job. It seemed to me the road had shrunk from the overgrowth quite a bit since I was a girl, but then I thought maybe it was because most of the boys who had brought me here drove smaller cars.
I wondered if kids still made out back there. These things seemed to be handed down from generation to generation, but to me, Lipsmack felt haunted. I wondered if that reverberated beyond my own imaginings, if the kids could feel the cold eyes of Jim Beverly’s ghost on them as they grappled and mated in the backseats of their daddies’ cars.
As we pulled into the clearing in front of Lipsmack, I could see in the waning light that the ground was littered with a few soda cans, a few beer cans, chip wrappers, and a sad, deflated condom. There was an ancient VW Beetle parked there, too, but it was empty. Probably some kid’s car had died, and he had left it until he could come back with jumper cables or get a tow. Sunset on a Thursday, and we had the place to ourselves. No white T-shirt adorned the low branch by the path up the hillside. The tree itself had ten years of growth on it. If the T-shirt rule was still in effect, the kids must have been forced to use the scrub bush that surrounded the tree. The grass was still flattened and the undergrowth dead from being driven over by herds of cars.
Burr parked the Blazer at the foot of the hill, by the path that led up the side of Lipsmack.
“What are we doing here, Lena?” said Burr. Night was coming on fast, and I could not read the expression in his eyes. Burr had beautiful eyes, small and square but so sweet, a warm brown toast color, two shades lighter than his skin. A legacy from his mama. “This looks like a make-out spot. I don’t think you brought me here to make out.”
“Maybe I did,” I said. I had left a dead man on top of that hill once, and my aunt Florence had dragged him away. I knew he was gone, but I could still feel him up there, cold and still. I was cold, too, so cold I was shaking with it. “Nothing good ever happened here, Burr. Maybe I brought you here to make something good happen.”
I clambered off my seat and swung one leg over his legs, resting myself on his lap. I was tucked in front of the steering wheel, straddling him and facing him. He was so alive; I had a strange, almost clinical interest in the quicksilver heat of him. I started undoing the buttons on his shirt and slipped my hands inside, trying to warm myself with his skin.
“Lena,” he said to me, and he caught my hands and held them fast between us. “Look at me.”
I wouldn’t meet his eyes, even in the safety of the growing night. In that moment, I was not interested in seeing him. All at once I was back in a place I hadn’t been in years, up in the driver’s seat of my brain, chilled to my core, dissociated from whatever my body might want to do. He still held my hands, so I couldn’t touch him, and he was strong. I knew there was no fighting him, so I did not.
I was the driver, and my body was only my instrument, my tool. I forgot my hands, let them go limp in his, closed my eyes, and dropped my head back, exposing my throat to him. I gave him the top half of me, helpless, relaxing at the waist so only his grip kept me from toppling sideways. I felt the steering wheel behind me, pressing my back, holding me close as I straddled him. Below my waist, I was alive. My body ground its hips against Burr and rejoiced in the helpless physical response the movement pulled from him. My ownership of him and of the moment was complete and dizzying and ugly.
“What is this?” he said.
I pressed into
him again, hips grinding, my upper body slack and helpless so he couldn’t release me unless he was willing to let me fall. “Lena,” he said, angry now, and as his grip loosened on my hands, I pulled them free and twined them around his neck, leaning forward so my long hair swung around our faces in a curtain, hiding us. I kissed him hard, riding him.
“Shit,” he said into my mouth, and his hand fumbled at the door. I felt the night air come in as he found the handle and swung it open. The dome light came on, hopelessly dim. Burr pulled himself sideways, trying to get out, but I was all over him, clinging, ruining his balance. He lost his innate grace, his legs tangled in mine, and we fell out. He recovered quickly and already was half rolling in midair, so he landed on his back, taking the brunt of the fall. We hit the dead grass, hard, my legs still locked around him. Our teeth banged together, and I felt the sharp tang of blood in my mouth, familiar and bracing. I caught his breath, sucking it into my lungs as it came out of him in a rush.
He was struggling to inhale. My hands were free and I used them on him, running them down his chest. I sat up, straddling him, crotch to crotch, and reached one hand behind my back, low, to cup his balls through his Levi’s. My body was a million different pieces, all separate, moving on him, and meanwhile, I was sitting cold and quiet in my driver’s seat. I watched the two of us fighting each other silently as Burr struggled to breathe.
“Stop!” he whispered as soon as he could inhale. “Shit, get off me.” I was already leaning down to kiss him again, but he grabbed my shoulders to stop me, saying my name, trying to make me look at him. My hands were free, so I slapped his face then, hard, and that shocked him enough to loosen his grip on my shoulders. I bent and kissed him on his slack, surprised mouth. And then I trailed my mouth sideways to suckle the heat of the stinging flesh I had hit.
He caught my hands again, hard and bruising, and I felt some of the coiled strength in him escaping his control. “Lena, stop,” he said, and his voice was soft but intense. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want this.”