The Heart is Deceitful above All Things Read online

  ‘They really want me to turn you in.’ She pats the phone. I press my face into the stuffed rabbit’s fake fur; he smells like saliva and pee.

  ‘But we’re a team, right?’ She sips from the open beer next to the phone. I shift my weight from leg to leg.

  ‘While I was at work you did all I asked you to, didn’t you?’ She pulls the black web net off her pulled-up hair and unpins the Sarah nametag that has a smiley face off her short pink dress.

  I nod. I had made myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and I washed the dishes standing over the sink on a chair, the way she showed me. I hadn’t let anybody in, and I put myself to bed at eight P.M., as she said.

  ‘All the lights was on,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I have to pay for the electricity around here. You see any sugar daddy pickin’ up the tab?’ She gazes around the room, then sits on the couch, crossing her feet on the coffee table. ‘You think I like dealing with coked-up truckers all night? Letting them feel my ass for their goddamned quarter tip?’ She kicks an empty can off the table toward me, drags deeply, and blows smoke out through her nose. ‘So you can be burning my money up?’

  I shake my head and stare at her sneakers, dirty white with silver laces. ‘No social workers dropped by, right?’

  ‘No,’ I mumble.

  ‘Mind!’ She leans forward.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘You didn’t answer the phone, right?’

  I shake my head no, then quickly add, ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘When they come again, what do you say?’ Her foot taps.

  ‘When you’re at work I got a baby-sitter.’ I think of Cathy, and falling asleep listening to her talking and laughing on our telephone.

  ‘’Cause they’re just testing you. You answer wrong and you go straight to the jailhouse. You hear me?’ She knocks off another empty can with her foot.

  ‘Yes’m,’ I whisper.

  ‘You are so spoilt, and you don’t know it. Well, it’s all over with now. I’m all over your shit, kid.’ She reaches in her dress pocket and pulls out some crumpled dollars. ‘Fifteen fuckin’ dollars, okay? Fifteen! How the fuck am I gonna feed you with this shit?!’ She kicks the money off the table. ‘Goddamn spoilt brat.’ She leans over her lap, folding her arms around her head. I stand there watching the quivers traveling down her spine like a breeze rippling water, listening to the little gasps escaping her. She raises her head, her eyes dripping black ink. ‘Get the fuck into bed!’ she screams.

  ‘We gotta go, we gotta get the fuck outta here.’ There are garbage bags partially filled on the kitchen floor. She unplugs the clock and drops it in.

  ‘Get dressed . . . go, hurry!’ She waves her arm at me. I go into my room, flick on the light, and dig out my clothes from the milk crates. They’re all clothes I’ve worn already. I don’t have my own hamper here. When I told her all my clothes were dirty and showed her the pile, she said if she wears her clothes until they’re ready to walk, so can I. I feel comforted by the dusty smell of my clothes as I put them on.

  ‘Goddamned social workers telling me what to do,’ I hear her mutter. ‘Stuck-up cunts, fuck them, fuck them . . . let’s move it in there, kid!’

  She comes into my room with a big black garbage bag.

  ‘Pack.’ She opens it and throws my clothes in, then hands it to me to do. She starts pulling my blankets off my bed. ‘Goddamn it, you pissed it again!’ She pulls them off and shoves them into the bag. ‘I told you, you’ll lie in it till you learn it ain’t the goddamn fucking toilet! Jesus!’ She finishes stuffing it in and leaves my room. I hear her swearing and tossing things into bags while I put the rest of my clothes in on top of my blankets.

  ‘We’ll have fun!’ she shouts. ‘I’ll take you to Disney World. I’ll get me a job as a character, I’d make a good princess or somebody. You can be there all the time, you like Mickey Mouse, don’tcha?! . . . It’ll be better there, you’ll see . . . I’ll get you so many fuckin’ toys your fosters’ll seem like poor damned slobs.’

  I hear her tossing things across the room. ‘I take care of my kid . . . fuck them!’ Something slams into the wall and breaks. ‘Fuck them.’

  Everything is loaded into the car. Plastic bags are in the trunk, in the backseat, and under my feet. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she asks me while snapping open a beer.

  ‘Yes’m,’ I whisper, and yawn, looking out at the sky, a thick, pasty black. She backs out of the cracked, concrete driveway and onto the gritty tar road. Insects and dust zoom by in the headlights like crashing meteors.

  ‘You’re mine. Fuck them, telling me what all to do.’ Yellow porch lights blink by. ‘Pay a goddamn baby-sitter four dollars an hour, and I don’t near make that in tips when it’s slow. Fuck ’em.’ She hits the dashboard with a fist, and I jump.

  ‘We got two hundred dollars waiting in a wire for us when it gets day.’ She grins to the windshield, then turns to me with a sly look on her face. ‘Know who sent us that money?’ I don’t answer. ‘You won’t believe who sent us that two hundred.’ She laughs.

  ‘The only thing your grandfather hates more than an unrepentant sinner like myself . . .’––she slaps her chest––‘is the goddamned government telling people all what to do with their own life, money, and childrens.’ She laughs louder. ‘And Lord does he hate them social workers.’ The sky seems to be getting blacker, not lighter, or maybe it’s just the mountains rising up around us.

  ‘One tried to come into his house, somebody made some complaint saying they’d seen Noah, my brother, whipped . . . well, after he got done speaking with all those folks he’s donated the church’s money to . . . well . . .’ She shakes her hand like it’s too hot. ‘Not only was she fired, but no uninvited government folks ever set foot on his land again.’ She laughs so hard, she has to rest her head on the steering wheel for a few seconds.

  A thin, pale blue ooze of light streaks the sky ahead of us. My grandparents, my foster grandparents, live up north, and at Christmas they bring me so much candy that my momma, my foster momma, takes it away and hides it.

  ‘How do you think I got you back, darlin’?’ She reaches her hand out to ruffle my hair, and I jump. ‘Social worker’s callin’ him up, askin’ him to sign the papers, like you’re some pound dog, just sign you away so some stuck-up sinners can adopt you, steal you forever.’ She fishes in her jeans jacket breast pocket for a cigarette.

  ‘He’d be damned if he’d let the government steal his blood . . .’ The cigarette flaps in her mouth. ‘Got me a lawyer, paid for my clothes, laid out more for you now than when I squirted you out, he wouldn’t pay for a diaper then, cheap son of a bitch.’ She combs her hair back with her fingers. ‘He said if he has to call out the goddamned Mountaineer Militia, he would. ’Course he didn’t cuss, be a damned sight if he did, tight-assed fucker.’ She tucks the cigarette behind her ear.

  ‘I feel good, damn.’ She leans over and pats my head again, a little too hard. ‘We’re a good team . . . you an’ me . . . nobody takes what’s mine.’ I yawn suddenly. She reaches into another pocket. ‘You tired? Don’t be tired, I need your company . . . here.’ She hands me a ball of tinfoil. ‘Open that all up . . . be careful.’ I pick the tight ball open to reveal little blue pills. ‘Take one . . . no, no, okay, take one and bite it in half.’

  ‘Is it medicine?’ I push the pills around the silver. They’re just like the ones in the cabinets, locked above the refrigerator at my old house, not the big chewable ones I get.

  ‘Yeah, it’s medicine . . . so do what Momma tells you––bite half.’ I hold one up to my mouth and bite it. The whole pill crumbles into my mouth, tasting bitter and chalky. My tongue rolls out.

  ‘No! Swallow it! . . . Swallow!’ Her hand cups my mouth. I taste her palm, salty and dry. Her voice rises. ‘Swallow now, goddamn it!’ I pull my tongue in, forcing the pill slivers to the back of my throat, and swallow. She presses her hand hard against my lips. ‘You swallow?’ I nod. ‘Don’t drop those pills!’ I hold them
carefully in the foil in my hand. ‘I’ll take another one myself, I reckon.’ She releases my mouth and takes the pills from me, popping one into her mouth before she balls them up and shoves them into her pocket.

  ‘See, now you’ll feel good, too.’ She grins and pats my head again.

  ‘See, I take care of you, tellin’ me I don’t, when I was fourteen maybe I didn’t take care of you right, but then the voices you were throwin’ was enough to drive a bean field Mexican insane.’ She shoves the cigarette from behind her ear into her lips.

  ‘You was possessed . . .’ She rubs my shoulder and smiles strangely. Pinks are leaking into the pale blues like eye shadow.

  ‘What was I supposed to do, anyways? You spoke in devils’ tongues, middle of the night, you’d start up, then Satan’s voice . . . Jesus, went to healings for you, not his church, mind you; see, he ain’t want nothin’ to do with you then. You weren’t his grandson then, huh?’

  I yawn again and feel my eyes getting heavy. I wish my Bugs Bunny wasn’t in the trunk.

  ‘Naw, you ain’t took the pill?’ I nod.

  ‘You took it?’

  ‘Yes’m.’ I yawn again.

  ‘Okay, all right. We got a drive ahead of us, and I’m doin’ this for you, for you, so you ain’t leavin’ me . . .’ She leans over toward me and shakes me hard. ‘Hold on, hold on, it’ll be soon!’ she shouts in my ear.

  I can see the outline of trees along the mountain against the glazed dark blue sky. My eyes start to blink closed.

  ‘Stop that!’ She pulls my thumb out of my mouth. I had quit sucking my thumb a year ago and gotten a big star on my chart. But I’d seen her when I woke in the morning; she’d been curled up on the couch, her blankets tangled at her feet, her thumb deep in her mouth. It had made me laugh, although I said nothing.

  ‘That was quick . . .’ I jolt awake, the sky a deep violet, and the blood pounding too loudly in my ears.

  ‘Not tired anymore, huh?’ I gaze around, unsure of where I am. I feel panic surging, the same as when they left me, sent me away.

  ‘You look like a bug-eyed rabbit. Told ya to only take half. You’ll learn to mind me . . .’ Her words come too fast and quiet past the hollow ringing in my ears. ‘Soon we’ll be gettin’ big money . . . don’t you worry, your grandfather won’t ever let your fosters get you back. Fuck them socials, tryin’ to tell me . . .’ Her voice turns high in imitation, ‘Maybe he’s better off with them. Fuck ’em. They try and get you back, your grandfather will squash them again!’

  ‘They want me back?’ I say loudly, my body shaking.

  ‘What? Hell no, hell no . . .’ She hits the steering wheel. ‘’Member the call, that phone call, just a few hours ago?’ I nod and can’t stop. ‘Well, that was the call, they all died. Your fosters, they’re dead as doornails.’ She pats my head hard again. ‘Cops killed ’em . . . ’cause of you . . . that’s why we hadda go. So you better not talk to cops or social workers, nobody . . . or we’ll get killed, cut up . . .’ She makes chopping motions with her hand.

  I wrap my arms around me. My skin is peeling off, and soon I’ll step out of it. I claw at my body to help the sloughing skin come off.

  ‘What’re you doin’?’

  I shout past the loud buzzing in my head, ‘I’m digging myself out!’ and watch clean, cold shafts of sun shadows rip into my flesh.

  A small thread of lightning spools through the black sky. I sit up on piled-up blankets and keep my eyes on the bar’s big screen door. Pickup trucks and beat-up old long cars pull in and out next to ours. It’s not raining, but short distant claps of thunder break the crickets and jukebox noise.

  I used to run to their bed and she’d hold up the blanket like a tent, and I’d climb over her body, warm and soft like dough, to the empty center between them, and the thunder would attack around us. My fosters, fucking fosters, like Sarah calls them.

  The screen door kicks open and a wobbly man in a cowboy hat leaning way too heavily on a small, yellowish woman, walks onto the muddy dirt. ‘Where’s goddamned car gone at?’ he yells, pushes her away, and stumbles behind the club.

  I watch the door again. Sarah went in to use the bathroom some time ago when it was still light; now it’s been dark a while.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she told me, and I haven’t. I watch the door for her and the road for cops.

  ‘While I’m in there going to the bathroom, you see any of ’em you hide down.’

  Cops almost got me once already. We were pulled over on the side of the road, I was asleep in the back, she was in the front with the seat leaned down.

  ‘Ma’am, ma’am, you okay, ma’am?’ I heard her jump up. The flashlight waving above the blanket pulled over my head made me feel like I was hiding in a deep lake, breathing air from the sun’s penetrating rays. ‘Fine, I’m fine, just dandy, sir.’

  ‘Don’t mean to startle you, but you can’t camp here, ma’am. You in need of assistance, ma’am?’ His voice was soft like the boys that came around to cut the lawn had been at my fosters, fucking fosters.

  ‘No, no . . . just on my way to Florida; see, some of the family got a little tired . . .’ Her keys rattle and turn in the ignition.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, there’s a cheap motel up a ways . . .’

  ‘Oh, I will check it out.’ The car rolls forward slightly. ‘Well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, have a safe trip.’

  The car pulls onto the road. ‘Righty-right, see ya . . .’ Her hand taps a good-bye. ‘Motherfucker,’ she mutters.

  ‘You up?’ Her hand gropes behind the seat. ‘I’m up, you’re up,’ she says, and the blanket is pulled off me.

  I raise my head cautiously. ‘You were wise to stay down or they woulda taken you. And that woulda been that.’

  The car door opening and loud laughter wakes me.

  ‘Can’t you all but wait till we get on to your place?’

  ‘Pretty flower like you, ah won’t let you be wiltin’ on me.’

  I stay quiet against the backseat.

  When they settle into the seats, I raise my head slightly. A big cowboy hat with a man under it is where she should be, driving. They smell like smoke and the beers she drinks.

  ‘I ran them boys away from you with but a fly swatter and shotgun, sugar. Claim you for my own some.’

  ‘They did all clear away like jackrabbits when you brought me that Jack and ginger.’

  ‘Damn straight they would.’ He snorts. The dark of the road floods the car.

  ‘Lemme see in there, girlie.’

  ‘That’s all you get for now.’

  Outside their laughter I fall back asleep.

  The door buzzer on the small gray house glows orange, like a lit Halloween pumpkin’s eye. A tinny, high-pitched buzz comes out of it.

  ‘Goddamned,’ a man says from behind the door. Crickets silenced briefly by my footsteps to the house from the car have dismissed me as a danger and are singing even louder. I step closer to the door and buzz again.

  ‘Who!’ the man’s voice shouts from inside.

  ‘Me,’ I whisper, not sure what to say. She told me to never say my name.

  ‘Selma?’

  ‘Me.’ The crickets have quieted down some, to listen in or because there’s something else out there bigger than me.

  ‘Who is it, goddamn it?!’

  I reach my hand out and scratch at the wooden door, like my dog did when he wanted back in.

  The door opens with a jerk and I look up at the man, naked except for his cowboy hat that’s not on his head but held in front of his lower self. The light inside is dim and flickers.

  ‘Come on, Luther . . . carry yourself back home.’

  ‘There’s a little kid here,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘You a boy or a girl?’ He taps my head. I stare at a hole in the top of the cowboy hat and say nothing.

  ‘A kid? Oh, shit!’ I hear her say, then the sound of blankets being kicked off.

  ‘What?’ he says, but steps aside. />
  She fills the doorway, wrapped in a sheet like a ghost. My heart contracts.

  ‘Momma,’ I start to say, but stop. ‘Sarah’ she had told me to call her: ‘I ain’t old and haggard enough to be Momma except in front of social workers––then I’m Momma. Got it?’

  But since we’ve been on the run from the law that are after me, I can’t be me and she can’t be she, and I don’t remember who we are.

  ‘Jesus, I fuckin’ forgot!’

  ‘What the f . . .’ He stares at her.

  ‘Don’t go frownin’, Luther, or your face’ll stay like that.’ She walks past him, takes my arm, and pulls me inside. A bed fills the room, sheets tangled and rolled off the mattress so the blue prison-type stripes of it show.

  ‘This is my brother . . . I’m sitting him.’

  ‘What? He been in the car the whole time?’ The room smells sour, like sweat and farts.

  ‘No, no, somebody dropped him off . . .’

  ‘Who?’ He swings the door closed with a slam. The candle flickers from the draft of it. He switches on the light.

  ‘Goddamn, you are something, baby.’ He moves his hat from his front to his head and walks naked toward the bathroom.

  I stare at my feet, lost under the lime green shag rug. The bathroom door slams.

  ‘He won’t be no bother,’ she shouts over her shoulder.

  The sound of pissing and then a flushed toilet answer her.

  She walks toward the bathroom and goes in, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘I coulda gone home with any cowboy there, and I picked you. Now you wantin’ to drive me back. I’ll tell everyone a four-year-old scares you from the best pussy you’ll ever have a chance to be takin’!’