Break the Skin (17 page)

He seemed so miserable, afraid that he’d told me things that would make me turn away from him. I didn’t know what to do but trust him with a story of my own. That’s how I came to tell him about Delilah and me having a falling-out and why I’d called for him to come and get me.

“She said I was nothing she’d ever miss.”

Lester shook his head. “That’s a mean thing to say. How can someone be a friend to you and then turn around and say something like that?”

I let the question go unanswered, rather than face what I suspected was the truth. Deep in the heart we were all like that, all mixed up with meanness.

“Lester,” I said, “Rose taught me some of her magic.” She’d even given me a book on it that told how to cast all sorts of spells, some for love, some for revenge. “Spells,” I said to Lester. “Hexes. Things like that.”

He put down his burger. He crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward me. His voice was a whisper. “I’ve always thought if anyone had the gift, it was you.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I feel it in your energy.”

“You’ve got that kind of energy, too,” I said, and that pleased him.

“I’ve never tried to cast a spell,” he said. “Do you think I could?”

I was just tagging along at this point, letting him go where he wanted—at least that’s what I told myself then. “Is the moon full?”

He got up and went to the back door. He opened it and stepped outside, and I heard the night all razzy with insects buzzing and the noise of cars heading up and down Route 130.

“Laney, come out here,” he said, and I got up and went outside to where he was standing pointing up at the sky. “The moon,” he said, and I looked up and saw it hanging full and bright above us.

He was like a little boy wanting to believe in something so bad, and
I couldn’t let him down. “Just say these words,” I told him, and I recited a spell I remembered from Rose:

Lady of luck, come out of your hidden course

bless your light upon me as the light of the moon shines above

and in the light of luck I will be blessed, when the moon is next to be full
.

He did what I told him, said it all in a whisper, and when he was done, neither of us spoke for a good while. Then he said, “Do you think it’ll work?”

“Guess we’ll have to wait until the next full moon to see.”

“I think it’ll work,” he said. “Laney, I really think it will.”

WHAT DIDN’T WORK
was Delilah and me. I had Lester drive me back to the trailer so I could get some clothes and whatnot, and she followed me into what had been my bedroom. She said, “So you moving in with Lester?”

She never said she was sorry, never acted like my leaving made one bit of difference to her.

“What’s it matter to you?” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Guess it doesn’t.” She turned then and walked out of the room.

I changed into my work clothes—khaki pants and navy blue polo shirt—and then packed as much as I could stuff into the old Army duffel of my dad’s that I kept around: more khakis and blue polo shirts, underwear, some shorts and T-shirts, flip-flops, the book on hexes and spells Rose gave me. I slung the duffel over my shoulder and went out into the living room.

Delilah was at the kitchen sink washing dishes, a chore I’d always done. She was cleaning a vegetable grater. I said her name, and when I
did, she looked up from the grater and she pricked her finger on one of its teeth.

“Damn it, Laney,” she said, and then stuck her finger in her mouth.

“Sorry,” I said, and I hated myself for saying it. “I’ll come back later for the rest.”

I stood there awhile, giving her a chance to say something to keep me there, to make it clear that I mattered to her.

She took her finger out of her mouth and looked at the cut. “I need a Band-Aid,” she said, and she went down the hall to the bathroom.

I listened to the squeal of the medicine cabinet door, a sound I’d heard time and time again, and I thought of all the things about the trailer that had always annoyed me—that door, the sagging spot in the floor of the living room, the windows that were hard to slide open—things that, no matter how irritating, had been our things, Delilah’s and mine, in this place we called home. I waited a few more seconds to give her the chance to come out of the bathroom and say something that would keep me from walking out the door, and when she didn’t, I went out to the truck where Lester was waiting.

“Ready?” he said, and when I didn’t say a word, he finally put the truck in gear and backed away from the trailer.

When he swung around to head out the driveway, I looked back, and that’s when I saw Delilah at the window, watching. It was all I could do to keep myself from telling Lester to stop. I wanted to run back into the trailer and tell her I knew she was sorry for what she’d said to me. I wanted to throw my arms around her and tell her I needed her, but it was too late for that—at least that’s what I told myself then; I was on my way.

AFTER WORK
, I asked Lester to drive me to New Hope. I went to my mother’s house, and I told her I wanted to come home.

“What about Delilah?” Mother stood with her hands on her hips. She was a little woman, like me, legs and arms starved of flesh, but she
didn’t take guff. She had a strong jaw that she jutted out ahead of her like she was daring someone to take a poke at it. “What’s gone on with the two of you? I thought you were like that.” She held up her hand and crossed her pointer over her index finger. “Two peas in a pod.”

“Nothing, Mother.” I dropped my duffel onto the floor. “I just thought you might need some company.”

“Bull.” She took me by the shoulders and put her face close to mine. “You’ve had a falling-out. I can see the hurt in your eyes.”

I was glad to have it out in the open. I told her yes, it was true, and she wanted to know what it was about. I told her the story of Tweet and Rose. I told her that’s where it started, and Delilah thought I was taking sides.

“Well, lonely hearts find lonely hearts,” Mother said. Then she gathered me into her arms and held me. Just like that, she forgave me for leaving home, for dropping out of school, for running with someone like Delilah.

“Maybe I should finish school,” I said. “I could get my GED, and then maybe college.”

She eased back from me and held me with her hands on my shoulders. I could see the light come into her eyes. She kept her voice steady like she didn’t dare hope for too much, but it was there, that hope, and I wanted to make sure she kept having it. Who knew? Maybe I could believe in it, too. I could find my way back to the path she’d imagined for me all along. I could sing.

“We can make that happen,” she said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“It is,” I told her.

It felt so good to be home, to have my mother touch me, to breathe in the scents I’d always known as hers: the rose of her Avon Sweet Honesty perfume and the woodsy smell that lingered on her clothes from her cedar-lined closet. I wanted to sleep in my bed under the slanted second-story ceiling. I wanted the window open so I could feel the night
breeze and smell the honeysuckle and the fresh-cut hay curing in the fields around New Hope. I wouldn’t have to smell the stink of the poultry house in Bird Town. Delilah could sleep there and make whatever life she was going to make without me.

“So it’s all right for me to come back?” I asked Mother.

“Yes, baby, it’s finer than frog hair in March.” She looked out through the screen door. “Who’s that in the truck that brought you?”

“That’s Lester. He works with me.”

“Are you two sweethearts?”

“We see each other now and then.”

She nodded. “I’ll put fresh sheets on your bed, while you tell him good-bye.”

I went out to the truck and I thanked Lester for taking care of me when I needed him to.

“I’ll do whatever I can for you. Really, Laney. I mean it. Whatever you need.”

“I’m all right now.”

When he backed out onto the street, I waved at him and he gave me a smile. Then he headed out to the highway and I stood there, missing him. I faced the truth—I was gone from Delilah. I was back in New Hope, and I’d given Mother reason to believe I could make something of my life. I could be the person she’d always had faith I was—a good-hearted girl with a singing voice the likes of which no one would be apt to forget. All I needed to do was to make friends with that girl again, to ask her to forgive me for running off and leaving her behind. I needed to get away from that other life, the one that put me in places like the Boar’s Nest in Dark Bend with a woman like Delilah, who could make a scene by pulling a .38 and waving it about. I hadn’t known it then, but despite how much I wanted to take care of her, I’d been too close to trouble, about to lose myself forever. Things would be different, I told myself, now that I was home.

But Rose was just up the street. That morning in June, I didn’t know
that in the days to follow—all through the autumn and winter and into the next spring—I’d find myself caught between her and Delilah, unable to determine what was true, even the stories I’d tell myself. Stories I still think on, wondering how in the world they could ever be real. Stories I’d change if I could.

MISS BABY

P
ablo moved in with Emma, imagining that if the police or the Rangers or Slam Dent came for him, the house next door to mine would be so obvious they’d overlook it. That’s what we were betting on.

“I’m tired of running,” Pablo said. “Miss Emma, what do you say?”

We were in my house, and Pablo was resting on the couch, his arm in a proper sling now that Carolyn and Donnie had picked one up at the medical supply store.

Emma stooped over to look at the cuts and bruises on Pablo’s face. She reached out a trembling hand and almost touched him before she stopped herself and pulled back her hand. “Mercy, God,” she said. “Hadn’t no one ought to do a body like that. I don’t care how much call there is.”

“World’s a rough place, Miss Emma,” Pablo said. “No one has to explain meanness. It just is what it is.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Pablo Omar Maximillian Ruiz.” Emma stamped her little foot. “You think anyone can live as many years as I have and not know that?”

“I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Emma, but I swear I don’t know what else to do but squirrel up at your house.”

“A fugitive,” she said. “Lord-a-mighty. I must be out of my head.”

I suspected that, secretly, it pleased her. A man to take care of. A
little danger to boot. Her husband, the late Mr. Hart, was an employee of Jack Ruby, the man who shot JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Hart played saxophone in the five-piece bump-and-grind band at the Carousel Club, Ruby’s burlesque joint on Commerce Street in Dallas, and for years after Ruby killed Oswald, the FBI kept an eye on Emma and the Mister in case they knew anything about the plot to kill the president. There was talk, of course, that the Mafia was involved and that when Ruby killed Oswald, he was making sure none of the story came out. To Emma, it was business as usual. The late Mister had a history of shady dealings—mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night, men knocking on the door and asking for him, sudden money that took Emma out on the town to all the best spots—so a little attention from the FBI was nothing. In fact, she told me, it was something that put a little spice on the blah-blah-blah. Having Pablo hiding out in her house would be, I suspected, like old times.

So the deal was done, but still there was the issue of the money, and like I said, we had no answers for that.

“Can’t get blood from a turnip,” Emma said.

“Unless I’m the turnip,” said Pablo. “Then there’s plenty to squeeze.”

This all took place on a Monday. On Thursday evening, the police came. It was the same officer who’d come the night I’d called to tell the story of Carolyn and Slam. The bug-eyed man with the red mustache and, hidden beneath his shirt, the heart tattoo I’d given him. It was just me and Donnie in my house, having our supper and trying to come up with some way to help Pablo, who was tucked away in Emma Hart’s spare bedroom.

“Miss Baby,” the police officer said, “we’ve heard some talk about someone whupping up on a man down on Fry Street. Broad daylight. A Mexican man. Any reason for me to think it might be someone other than Pablo? Slam Dent finally find him, did he?”

I sat back down at the table and picked up a butter knife. “Maybe you should ask Slam Dent.”

“Well, I would if I knew where he was.”

I spread a little butter on a piece of bread and then laid it on my plate. “Sounds like you just can’t keep track of folks.”

“People disappear,” Donnie said.

“That’s right,” said the officer, “but they always show up, now, don’t they?” He shifted his weight, and the leather of his gun holster creaked. “Mind if I take a look around?”

The portable TV on the counter was tuned to CNN with the volume down low. I could see footage of the war in Iraq: soldiers in camouflage fatigues, rifles drawn as they broke down the door to a squat stone house. What else could I say to the officer but “Go ahead. You won’t find Pablo.”

I imagined Emma had already seen the patrol car parked along Scripture, had maybe even watched the officer come up to my door. I felt sure she was right now keeping an eye on things, ready to send Pablo out the back if for some reason the officer decided to pay her a visit. We’d cleared out all of Pablo’s things, except for the clothes in my bedroom closet, the ones Donnie wore as his own, so I knew the officer wouldn’t find anything different than what was there the night he came about Carolyn.

“You ever do anything to Slam Dent from when I called you before?” I put the question to the officer as he came out of the spare bedroom and started toward mine. “About Carolyn? Or can a man get away with holding a gun to a woman’s head and making her take off her clothes?”

“Now, Miss Baby, you know there’s laws against such things.”

“So you did something?”

“Soon as we can find him, you can bet we will.”