I rubbed my cheek.
But I was smiling by the time I turned around and walked down the steps.
Somehow it made me feel better to know that I wasn’t just a psycho. Like all sorts of European royalty in the history books, I was an inbred psycho. And that explained a whole hell of a lot.
As I walked back to town, I was all of sudden hit with a forgotten memory.
As ugly as I had been considered when I was nine, not all of Cora’s friends had thought so. And one had not exited the house according to plan after he had pulled up his pants and left her sleeping in bed.
I remembered waking in the middle of the night to see him. He stood, still as a shadow in the middle of the living room. And he had the unsettling quality of a specter.
For a moment I had wondered if my sleep-filled mind was playing tricks on me. I had thought maybe he was a coat rack that I was just making out to be a man.
But then he had stepped forward into the moonlight, his index finger on his lips.
He must not have been from Glass, or else he would’ve known that asking me to be quiet was totally unnecessary.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.
Then he pulled down my blanket and looked at me in the same hungry way that I had seen men look at Cora.
I was more fascinated than scared at this point, and I just watched his fingers as they lifted up my T-shirt.
“Raise your arms,” he said.
So I did.
Then suddenly Cora was on his back. Her red nails scratched his face from behind and sent him reeling into a wall. She jumped off his back and pushed his face into the wall, slamming it again and again.
I turned on the light beside the couch just as she finally stopped. He was stumbling around in a small circle now, his face bloody and his eyes dull with pain. Then Cora opened the door and shoved him out of the house.
It was the quietest fight I have ever witnessed.
After he was gone, she had slapped me. “Don’t let nobody touch you, you stupid bitch. Don’t you ever let any of them men touch you, you hear me?”
I nodded, expecting her to hit me again, but she just shook her head, looking disgusted, and returned to her bedroom.
Back on the road, I remembered all of this and realized Cora might not have loved me, but she did protect me.
She did protect me.
I was humming a half an hour later when Mama Jane pulled into the BP.
There were a few moments of hesitation, but then I dumped the box of my high school things in a close-by trash bin before climbing into the truck, quick like I was ripping off a Band-Aid. Lord knew I already had enough baggage.
“How was your visit?” she asked, after I had settled into the passenger seat.
“Good,” I said. “Informative. We talked, and I decided to forgive her.”
Which was pretty much the truth when it came down to it.
“Is that right?” Mama Jane released her air brakes, and they gave a satisfying whoosh as we pulled out of the BP parking lot and left Glass, Mississippi, behind.
. . .
Two days later, we drove into Los Angeles via downtown, just like the first time I had come into the city with Mama Jane. Except now I recognized the signs of drug addiction and mental illness among the people who wandered in front of the truck.
After we dropped off Mama Jane’s load, she took me back to my apartment. And as we drove down Sunset, we saw two guys putting the finishing touches on a billboard for a new Keira Knightley movie called Atonement.
“Atonement,” I said, tasting the word on the tip of my tongue. “That’s a good word.”
Mama Jane shot me a worried look. “Are you sure you’re ready to go home?” she asked. “You can come out with me on another job. I appreciate the company.”
It was a tempting offer. I wouldn’t mind forgetting about my real life for another week or so and going on another road adventure. Then I thought about the billboard and decided. “Thank you, but no. I’ve got work to do.”