The guy from the hot dog cart pointed to Tessa Lee and said, “That gal right there’s the one who riled her up, Reggie.”
“Her?” the man asked, and Tessa Lee looked away and started stuffing the firefly cloak back into her backpack. She wanted to run, but she hadn’t even told her momma about Travis.
“Yeah,” the hot dog guy said. “I saw her. She was doing some kinda voodoo or something, whispering and putting on a robe.”
The zipper on her backpack got caught in the fabric, and Tessa Lee forced it, blushing, trying not to look at all the people who were looking at her, puzzled and accusing.
“What are you harassing my employees for?” Reggie asked. “Get outta here, you little punk,” and he took a step toward Tessa Lee, like he was running her off, like she was a raccoon in his garbage. But before Tessa Lee had a chance to bolt, her momma let out another big cry, and she couldn’t just leave with her momma crying.
“Holy shit,” the guy from the hot dog cart said and laughed, and Reggie shook his head like nothing in the whole world made sense. He grabbed Tessa Lee by the arm, and when he did, her momma howled again.
Tessa Lee tried to yank her arm away. She almost yelled out “Travis got killed,” but that seemed like the wrong way to break the news, especially when her momma was already so upset, and besides that, she didn’t want to say Travis’s name out loud if her momma was just going to deny she knew him.
Before she had a chance to do anything, Reggie shouted back to the mermaid, “Straighten up in there! Cut off the light and go clean up your face. I mean it!”
And in a flash, just that fast, the picture window went dark inside. The mermaid disappeared, and Tessa Lee’d missed her opportunity. People on the boardwalk oohed and laughed and began to disperse.
Tessa Lee tried to wiggle her arm away, but the man grabbed her tighter.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, not quietly.
“You shut up,” he said under his breath, and he pulled her down the block, his fingers tight on her arm.
“Let me go,” Tessa Lee demanded. “That’s my momma. I’ve gotta talk to her.”
Reggie paused, looked down at her, and laughed. He had on sunshades, so she wasn’t sure where he was looking, but she thought he might be looking at her breasts.
“You can’t talk to her right now,” he replied, but he relaxed his grip a little. They turned the corner and moved toward an amusement park. “I got a business to run,” he said. “Can’t have any whacked-out mermaids screaming at the customers, you understand?”
“But she’s my momma,” Tessa Lee insisted. There was bile in her throat. Her heart was rising, fluttering. She needed some crushed ice.
“Whether she is or whether she ain’t, she’s on the job right now,” the man said.
Tessa Lee clenched her teeth to keep from crying. “I’ve waited a long time to see her,” she whispered. Then she tightened every muscle and pulled herself into the darkness at her center, where none of it could touch her, where there was no need to give up because there was nothing else to lose.
The man with his fingers still clamping her arm said, “She gets off at 11:00, and you can talk to her then. But I don’t wanna see you back on that block before. You hear me?”
When Tessa Lee didn’t reply, he grabbed her chin and held it up, and he pulled his face down close to her, so close she could see the clogged black pores on his nose.
“You hear me?” he repeated. “If I see your face again before 11:00, I’ll call somebody to come get you. Or better yet, I might put you to work for me.” He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth, then swatted her hard on her bottom. “You mark my word,” he said.
Tessa Lee started walking in the other direction. She didn’t have anywhere to go, but that didn’t stop her. She wiped her mouth off hard with the back of her hand and marched on.
Sheri Reynolds, A Gracious Plenty
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