The Heart is Deceitful above All Things Page 16

  ‘Nothing for you, didn’t have your size, we’ll have to dye your clothes so the coal can’t recognize you,’ she says in monotone, and drives on.

  We stop at a pharmacy. She buys black hair dye and antidote. She reads from the label. ‘For accidental poisonings . . . antidote,’ she says, tapping the plastic brown bottle, then pushing it under her seat. We pull into a Mobil and go into the ladies’ and lock the door. She pours solution and covers our heads with the cold wet dye. Someone knocks on the door. ‘It’s broken,’ she shouts. ‘Go away!’

  We sit on the bathroom floor while she counts the time till we wash it off. ‘One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four . . .’

  We leave the Mobil bathroom with black-ringed sinks and black dyed hair. She leaves her pink T-shirt, jeans, white sneakers, and white bra and panties in the Salvation Army paper bag under a toilet stall. She puts on the black shiny raincoat and black rubber boots.

  ‘Now we’ll get supplies, dye your clothes, and the coal won’t recognize us.’ She smiles and we walk toward the car.

  ‘Maybe we can paint it black,’ she says, pointing at it.

  After a few days I was released from the hospital. One of the alternate preachers from my grandfather’s church drives me home, his peach-colored hair glued tight to his skull like a swim cap. He preaches psalms to me during the long three-hour drive, taking a break to tune in my grandfather’s radio sermon. ‘Why we will burn in eternal hellfire unless we are truly saved’ is the topic.

  I stare at the white plastic band stapled around my wrist, my name printed in purple. When I first woke up it said John Doe, but a hospital worker knew my grandfather, recognized me from services, so now I was another me again, my hair oiled, combed back, and parted, wearing blue slacks, a button-down white starched shirt, and a blazer.

  Before we get out of the car to go into Piggly Wiggly to get our supplies of clothing dye, Canada Dry, and Pringles, the only food not poisoned by the coming black plague, I reach into my back pocket and enclose the baby coal in my sweaty palm.

  I pull it out and place it on the dash in front of my mother. She says nothing for a long time, just stares. I want to confess about the coal under the house, how it was my fault, but all I can say is, ‘It’s the baby,’ and she nods and closes it inside her hand. Her eyelids closed but flickering, she presses it to her heart and then buries it in her pocket, still clutched in her hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says in a whisper.

  I stand still in my grandfather’s antique-filled study as if in a dream, remembering again the smells of lemony wax and baking bread, the sounds of oxfords clicking on hard wood, clocks ticking off seconds, and the rules of felt-covered Bibles and leather straps hanging on hooks.

  I listen to hear if he’s coming, and in the absence of his footsteps I walk slowly across the wood floor to the small black coal stove, its opening like a barred jail cell or blackened teeth. Its mouth would glow behind, a demon Day-Glo red when lit.

  I place my hand lightly on the smooth coal stove like I had on ours when it was hot; my mother’s hand had covered mine, pressing it down.

  In the car she turns to me and speaks very solemnly, her hair slicked back and hanging like a worn leather shoe tongue.

  ‘You and I will be the only survivors. Everyone and everything else will be burned, crushed, or poisoned.’

  From the corner of my eye I see people chatting and laughing, pushing their shopping carts, unaware of their coming fate.

  When she tells me the story it’s always around Christmastime, after she comes home early in the morning smelling like beer, lipstick, and smoke. She flicks on the light, pushes me over to sit down, and tells me what used to happen at Christmas.

  It’s a German custom, German like my grandfather’s father, like the throat-spitting words he shouts at my grandmother late at night.

  The stockings are hung over the fireplace for all ten children, their empty shoes under the tree. On Christmas morning they line up fully dressed, excited and silent in the hall, until my grandmother allows them in. They walk to the fireplace, and from the weight of how their stockings hang their faces fall or lighten.

  ‘I knew what was inside, I heard my brothers whispering what they found in theirs,’ she slurs, and slaps her leg. ‘They’d gotten theirs filled bad before, but not me, I’d always . . .’ She raises her hand up and lets it fall sloppily onto me. ‘Always was a good girl.’ She shakes her head too widely, her hair flapping and sticking in her eyes. ‘I was a good girl,’ she whispers.

  ‘My sisters all had treats in their stockings, only me . . .’ Her fingers run through her smoke-filled hair. ‘Everyone went to their shoes next: treats or a switch, or more black . . . Jason and Joseph got switches, Noah and Job and me, just like in our stockings: coal lumps.’ Her voice rises in a half shout. ‘Fuckin’ coal!

  ‘Now . . .’ She gets up and paces drunkenly beside my bed. ‘I’d learnt my verses, my psalms, my chapters, I’d done my sidewalk preaching, Bible studies, done it all . . .’ Her hands wave out like she’s smoothing a tablecloth.

  ‘My sisters stuffed down their cakes and counted their Christmas money from inside their stockings and shoes while Jason and Joseph went in to the preacher to get their whippings . . . I went, too, bold as lightning!’ She wobbles into a wall. ‘I carried my stocking in my left, my shoe in my right.’ She holds out each empty hand.

  ‘“What’s this for?” I asked him before he’d even turned around, old fuck!’ She snorts a laugh. ‘He says nothing, right? Tells me to leave his study at once!’ Her voice imitates his.

  ‘“What’s this for?” I yelled again. And know what, know what?!’ She slaps a wall, laughing. ‘He didn’t answer me none, so I dumped it all out, the stocking and the shoe. That coal all over his fancy antique Persian motherfuckin’ ugly rug. And I stomped on it, too, ground it right in, crushed it all in the rug!’ she says between laughs.

  She holds on to the wall and slowly slides down it, laughing. ‘And you know what he’d said I’d done? You know?’ She slaps the floor, tears rolling down her face from laughter.

  ‘“You have evil and sin in your heart,” he told me!’ She snorts, then starts to choke.

  ‘You were born less than a year later, so he knew what he was talkin’ ’bout!’ She lies there laughing until she falls asleep.

  Sometimes, though, she’d have a needle still hanging in her arm and I’d slide it out, wipe it dry with toilet paper, and she’d mumble the rest: how he had her gather the coal up off the rug, place it in the stove, and light it. She stood, still seething, waiting for his apology. Waiting while he whipped her brothers. Stood and waited hours while the family went to services, her hands rolled into fists, watching the red coals burn and pop like her rage, while her father preached in his church. Waited till he returned, took off his jacket, hung and smoothed it. She would take her whipping and not cry. She would still ask what she had done.

  She took off her blouse like he ordered, covering with her arms her newly formed breasts. He towered over her, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her to the squat, cast-iron stove.

  No one came when she screamed as he pressed her back to the door of the stove.

  No one ever said a thing about the raised, welted lines like jail bars or thick red teeth that still line her back.

  ‘We can outsmart it,’ she says, staring out at the shoppers rushing past. ‘If we become as black and as devious as the coal, we won’t ever burn.’ She points to the people entering in the automatic sliding doors. ‘They all will.’

  Her face pulls back in angry disgust. ‘We’ll survive because we know the power and the evil of the coal.’

  She gets out and I follow behind her.

  VIVA LAS VEGAS

  ALONG THE DESERTED topaz-colored mountains, under the crowding of trees, our car cruises in its separate world. No lights from bars or clubs penetrate or distract, there’s just thick, unbroken wilderness. So, life changes to adapt. She surv
ives, and I treasure it.

  I sit next to her in the front seat. My power surges as if I were a liquid constellation. I am the keeper of the maps. I measure the veinlike lines against my thumb. I remember the names of upcoming towns, villages, and stations, like a relative searching a crash survivors list.

  ‘You sure this is right?’ she gnaws on her fleshy lips.

  ‘Trust me.’ I clear my throat and sit taller in my seat. I can’t help but feel she’s a caterpillar squirming on my arm. I like the way that feels.

  ‘Watch for Tawnawachee!’ I order. She leans forward and squints. Her yellow hair is breathing back the three o’clock October sun. She’s so pure looking, I ache.

  ‘Help me here!’ She bounces on the seat, glancing at me. I laugh.

  ‘You ain’t passed it.’

  ‘I’m sick of goddamned trees and fuckin’ mountains!’ She slaps the wheel. I’m not. I like to pretend we’re runaways together, like Hansel and Gretel abandoned in the deep growth of ancient woods.

  ‘Tawnawachee . . . left, here!’

  She turns sharply, tires squealing.

  ‘You almost made me miss it!’ she whines.

  ‘Did not.’ I blink at her.

  ‘Did too! Damn, I need a drink, smoke, Valium, anything!’

  My stomach tightens. ‘OK, keep goin’ straight for a whiles.’ I look out the window. The trees are thinning out.

  ‘Vegas is so great, gonna refill on cash . . .’ She pats her jeans pocket.

  ‘Are kids allowed?’ I look at her.

  ‘Oh, I have my ID.’

  ‘I mean . . .’ My throat starts to clamp. She interrupts.

  ‘I can’t hardly wait! How far?’

  ‘Far, go faster.’

  ‘Men just dying for hot young blondes . . .’ A deer scampers out of the way. She doesn’t notice.

  ‘I have the luck of Satan on the dollars slots, I swear, too, the men are so easy . . .’ I roll down the window, and the cool air blowing through my hair makes me squint and fills me with a strange excitement. I imagine birds flying in to steal my maps, like bread crumbs, losing us forever.

  ‘Now what?’ She turns to me with such an open, trusting expression, her eyes a wide translucent pale green, that I can almost see the world through them.

  ‘OK, now you turn left . . . yeah.’ My confidence is reflected in her full moving lips, silently and absentmindedly repeating my directions.

  ‘Here? Here?!’

  ‘Yeah, now after the creek you turn left.’ The complexity of all possible outcomes of each turn, each direction, are stored inside me, filling me with strength.

  ‘Faster,’ I grunt. I imagine the Dart on a runway, sprouting wings and taking off.

  ‘You can win cars, too, I’ll try to do that.’ She flutters her hands as she talks, almost forgetting the wheel. ‘And get rid of this piece of shit.’ A stomachache is making me lean forward.

  ‘Faster,’ I order, my heart racing.

  ‘What?’ She looks at me.

  ‘Olive juice,’ I mouth to her, and close my eyes.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Faster, faster!’ I almost yell, the wind howling in my ears.

  ‘Don’t you order me.’ She speeds up anyway.

  ‘Let’s never ever stop!’ I laugh hysterically.

  ‘What?’ She laughs. I rub my hands over my face and hair like I’m scrubbing myself.

  ‘Oh, you’ll love Vegas . . .’ She thumps the wheel.

  ‘Faster,’ I whisper.

  ‘I can’t wait, I swear!’ She wets her lips.

  ‘Don’t stop.’ I pump my knees up and down.

  ‘Hey!’ She starts to slow down. ‘Hey, we miss it?’

  ‘No!’ I shout. Her hand flies out quickly and, like a magic trick, transforms into a fist and pounds once, hard, on my thigh. I become very still. She slows down some more. The trees are giving way to rocks and shrubs.

  ‘Now where are we?’ Her voice is controlled, not like Gretel anymore. Despite myself I unfold the map.

  ‘The turn is still a whiles up,’ I mumble.

  ‘Don’t you fucking try it!’ She shakes her fist at me.

  I carefully fold my map into its neat rectangular shape. ‘Try what?’ I smooth it against my jeans leg.

  ‘Don’t you’––she glares at me––‘ever try to lose me! You fuckin’ hear me!’

  I turn my face to her, smile slightly, and inhale.

  I won’t ever lose you . . . I promise.

  ‘The turn is still a whiles up,’ I mumble. I roll up my window.

  Now it’s passing us by too fast; there is nothing solid to grab on to or hide inside of, even if there were more than just sagebrush, tumbleweeds, and flat sand blazing by.

  I’ve slid down behind her seat where it’s curved as a cradle. But I can’t get small enough ’cause the sky’s too smooth and open, without a cloud’s shadow to move into. This is God’s magnifying glass.

  ‘See the lights? Way off there . . . oh, some high roller’s gonna get lucky, so lucky . . .’ She drums on the dash.

  I curl up smaller, clutching my neatly folded maps no longer needed.

  ‘Oh, not some drunk cowboy, like Duane, ’member him?’ She laughs. ‘No, I’m gettin’ me a married professional!’ She smacks her lips. I wrap a fist around the metal bolting her seat down.

  ‘Gonna get another daddy! Time for some pampering,’ she mutters. ‘’Bout that time, I think.’

  I lean my skull into the fake leather seat back, and I can feel the press of her spine.

  ‘Bet you’re hungry!’ I push my head into the nauseating smell of Naugahyde.

  ‘Did you gobble up your doughnuts?’ I smile to myself and reach under her seat. I hold up a greasy smooshed jelly roll as if for target practice. My stomach growls at the sticky scent of it.

  ‘Why didn’t you eat it? You must be hungry.’ I hear her adjusting her mirror to find me. I keep the doughnut raised.

  ‘You hungry?’ I shake the doughnut, no.

  ‘Bet ya gotta go.’ I shake again, no, and feel my gut cramped and aching.

  ‘Well, I’m starvin’! Big juicy burger is what I need, fries, lotsa ketchup . . . how’s that sound?’

  I close my eyes and savor the attention like a soldier standing on a land mine before his battalion, and just as quickly, it’s over.

  ‘Sit up, c’mon, get up!’

  She’s not asking permission any longer.

  I climb up onto the seat and stare out at the too bright sand sea like an overexposed photo. And there is nothing to anchor on to, to stop what’s happening.

  ‘Mile up’s a diner,’ she says, detached. I stare at her eyes in the mirror, looking straight ahead, filled with Vegas. I part my legs. She switches on the cassette play.

  ‘Oh, I love this song,’ she says. ‘Dead Kennedy’s, yeah!’

  She starts singing. ‘Bright lights city . . .’

  I raise my hips up off the seat.

  ‘Gonna set my soul . . .’

  I watch her in the mirror, rocking her head, looking like a child lost in a dream.

  ‘Gonna set my soul . . .’

  I loosen my bowels.

  ‘On fire . . .’

  I wait, unblinking into the mirror.

  ‘Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las . . .’

  She sniffs the air. ‘You fart? . . .’

  She glances at me through the mirror. I smile. ‘What the . . . ?’

  She snorts loudly. ‘You fuckin’ didn’t!’

  I remember a scene from a movie where a man places his bare palm over a flame to prove he will endure whatever necessary out of loyalty.

  ‘You motherfuckin’ evil fucker!’

  I slide my hands under my thighs as she half turns toward me, still driving, her free arm reaching over the seat.

  ‘Try to ruin everything, everything!’ she sobs as her fist bounces off my legs, chest, stomach. ‘You always have, always!’

  I keep grinning as I feel something soli
d dropping, capturing us both, holding her to me.

  ‘I’ve sacrificed so much for you.’ Tears stream down her face. I lean forward so she can reach me better. I bite my lip through my grin.

  ‘You shitty bastard!’ She keeps driving, snot and tears flying as she swirls her head back and forth, from me to the road, her hand flailing at me.

  ‘I’ve tried so hard, I’ve lost so much.’ A giggle escapes me, and suddenly the white neon of Dolly’s Diner is flashing through the windshield, filling the car and catching her fist, midstroke, like a projector burning through a film frame.

  Silently she turns back in her seat. She wipes her nose on her sleeve and pulls into the parking lot. The crunch of the driveway sounds too loud in the silence. I’m still grinning. She parks in the shadows.

  ‘I bet you’re hungry.’ Her voice is sweet but cold, ironed of any previous wrinkles.

  She gets out, opens the trunk, digs around, comes over to my side, and opens my door.

  ‘Honey, you go clean up.’ Her hand pats my head, each touch too swift, too brief, to be caught. She hands me my bag.

  ‘Here’s ten dollars, get us burgers, sweetie?’ She sniffles, wipes her nose again, and reaches her hand out to me. She looks away. I put my hand around hers, she leaves hers open. I step onto the gray gravel and look up quick to her eyes, staring toward the lights of Vegas.

  ‘I’ll just go get gas down at that Chevron.’ She motions with her head. Her hand is gone from mine, and she pats my back with little pushes forward.

  ‘Go eat.’

  Robotically I walk away. She’s humming as she gets in the car. I keep moving forward, still grinning. The ignition turns. I see people talking, laughing, eating through the yellow-lit windows. The smoosh in my pants travels down my leg as I walk forward.

  Tires turning, gravel popping. A kid stuffing in a big forkful of cake. The bump of wheels hitting tar.

  I spin around, a frozen grin plastered to my face, and watch the car pull out with a screech.

  I wrap my hands around my ribs like I’m gripping a cliff ledge as the orange tail lights pull away. And suddenly I’m running to the road edge and I don’t breathe as the glowing lights approach the Chevron and quickly float, like a disembodied spirit, past it.