Charlie laughed. “Seemed pretty fuckin’ nice to me.”
“Hey, you don’t talk like that in this house!” Kit’s voice got shrill. She wasn’t ready to discuss this.
“Okay, I’ll talk like that out there.” Charlie barged through the screen door and stood outside, shouting, “He seems pretty fuckin’ nice to me!”
In a few swift steps, Kit bounded through the door and tackled her daughter to the grass, fists pinned at her ears.
“Girl, you listen here. Keep away from that man. Do you understand?” Charlie glared back at Kit, her features hard and defiant, but her eyes wavered. She pushed Kit off and ran inside.
Kit sat on the steps, unsteady with fright. A crowd of emotions barged in at once. Regret for getting physical with Charlie, terror that Manny was back, bewilderment at how different he seemed . . . kind, almost, and humbled. She was pissed that she had been caught off guard. Ashamed at realizing that beneath it all, a part of her was happy to see him, as if her heart had forgotten all the rest. Standing there in her home, between her daughter and Manny, she had felt ready to burst, like every thought or worry from Charlie’s entire life wedged itself into that moment. She tried to numb out but couldn’t pull the plug on her feelings.
Kit quaked. She dashed around back, grabbed the machete, and tore into the tangle of blackberry vines at the door. There was no way to push the feelings away, so she brought them down on the brambles. Long, vicious slashes in quick succession, sections broke off and flew around her. Each time her blade made contact she yelled savagely, like her voice could do the cutting, on and on until her muscles turned to mush. She collapsed on a litter of thorns, blind to her surroundings, breathless.
The memories, long sequestered, emerged like bees dispatched from a shaken hive, one, two at a time, then several more until the whole swarm was upon her.
Part II
Chapter Seven
Hempstead, Texas, 1970
The girl couldn’t risk being seen on the open country road, so she crossed the tree-heavy pastures and threaded the fences that divided them, spring-loaded grasshoppers bouncing away from her ankles. All around her, cicadas thrummed in harsh staccato, sounding like hard rain on a tin roof. Woozy with lack of food and drink, she swayed and propped herself against a young pecan tree until her blood made its slow crawl back to her brain. She knew now not to ignore the rattle of true hunger and pushed steadily through the grass toward the gas station sign in the distance. Forced to approach the road to get to the station’s entrance—and, she hoped, food—she heard the rumble of an eastbound car. When she saw it was police, she squatted low, head tucked, arms hugging her bony shins. Her heartbeat slowed and her mind stilled, and she stayed this way long after the car had passed.
Someone like her wouldn’t last long on the lam. She could hear the crackly APB now: Unaccompanied minor, says she’s thirteen years of age but doesn’t look more’n ten, possibly of Mexican descent, possibly in need of medical attention. All units be advised. Like most kids, she had picked up the lingo from watching Dragnet; unlike most kids, she had also learned it from the backseats of cop cars. Every other time she had tried to escape her foster homes, she had been caught. Not today. Today she was going to meet Eleanor.
The girl had first heard of her great-aunt Eleanor a few months ago when one of the social workers, a perpetually stressed, coffee-scented woman named Barb, had mentioned to her foster parents, the Machers, that she had just found a note in her case file about a relative, her birth mother’s aunt, named Eleanor, who lived in a town called Pecan Hollow. Barb said they had tried to reach her when Kit was an infant, but for some reason or another, it hadn’t worked out. The girl had tried to punch the social worker for not telling her sooner, as if she hadn’t been wishing for something like this her entire life.
The Machers had had to hold her down and nearly stuffed a chill pill between her clenched teeth. If the girl had been a gentler child, if she had asked nicely, maybe she could have gotten more information out of the beleaguered and cross social worker. But by the time she finally settled herself down, Barb was packing her bag to go. The girl had begged the social worker to put her in touch with the aunt, a phone number, a last name, but she sighed and shrugged, and though Barb said she would look into it, Kit knew from the look in her eyes, like she had already moved on to her next appointment, that this woman would do no such thing. She trudged out of the house, her monstrous briefcase slapping against her calf.
Why the great-aunt hadn’t claimed her, the girl didn’t know. Sometimes she got angry at Eleanor, thinking of the bastards and idiots she’d been entrusted to, people who oughtn’t be allowed to care for animals let alone children. She worried if she found Aunt Eleanor, she might be so wicked to her aunt that she’d get kicked out before she had a chance to prove she was worth keeping. She supposed it was an awful lot of trouble to take in a child. But now that she was thirteen she could help take care of her aunt. Sometimes she let herself look forward to the day they would meet. Maybe Eleanor flicked her earlobe when she was nervous, too. Maybe she also hated candy. Maybe, for once, the girl could see her features in someone else’s face.
By the time she reached the filling station, it had been a day and a half since her last meal, and she trembled with hunger. She kept cover behind a staked panel of particleboard that read dirt for sale and watched. A guy with gray skin and suspenders sat behind the counter, smoking and chatting with a local, while a city man in a maroon suit stood in line, jittering with impatience and too much caffeine. Outside, a glossy station wagon refueled, a friendly looking dad with bushy sideburns manning the pump. Three kids, covered in snacks, chattered and tugged at each other in the wayback, while their pretty mom with Patty Duke hair stood outside the car stretching her legs. At once frightened and rapt, the girl watched them as if they were a strange species. They had the most beautiful, peachy skin, smooth and even, like it was painted on. No spider veins or sores, no bruising or eczemic flaking, no dimpled flab. Nothing like the decaying people she had known.