“I WANT MY DADDY!”
Elaine had left the room, closing the door gently behind her. What an effort it had been not to descend to the child’s level and slam it! Even now, standing in Mr. Patel’s oil-smelling shed, she would not admit how close she had come to shouting at her daughter. It wasn’t Nana’s strident tone, so unlike her usual soft and tentative voice; it wasn’t even the physical resemblance to Frank, which she could usually overlook. It was how much she sounded like him as she made her unreasonable and unfulfillable demands. It was almost as if Frank Geary had reached across from the other side of whatever gulf separated that violent old world from this new one, and possessed her child.
Nana had seemed her old self the next day, but Elaine had been unable to stop thinking about the tears heard through the door, and the way Nana knocked away the hand that had meant only to comfort, and that ugly, yelling voice that came from Nana’s child’s mouth: I want my Daddy. Nor was that all. She had been holding hands with ugly little Billy Beeson from down the block. She missed her little boyfriend, who probably would have enjoyed taking her behind a bush so they could play doctor. It was even easy to imagine Nana and the scabrous Billy at sixteen, making out in the back of his father’s Club Cab. French kissing her and auditioning her for the position of first cook and bottle washer in his shitty little castle. Forget about drawing pictures, Nana, get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Fold my clothes. Haul my ashes, then I’ll burp and roll over and go to sleep.
Elaine had brought a crank flashlight, which she now shone on the interior of the auto annex, which had been left alone. With no fuel to run Dooling’s autos, there was no need for fan belts and spark plugs. So what she was looking for might be here. Plenty of that stuff had been stored in her father’s workshop, and the oily smell in this one was just the same, bringing back with startling vividness memories of the pigtailed girl she’d been (but not with nostalgia, oh no). Handing her father parts and tools as he called for them, stupidly happy when he thanked her, cringing if he scolded her for being slow or grabbing the wrong thing. Because she had wanted to please him. He was her daddy, big and strong, and she wanted to please him in all things.
This world was ever so much better than the old man-driven one. No one yelled at her here, and no one yelled at Nana. No one treated them like second-class citizens. This was a world where a little girl could walk home by herself, even after dark, and feel safe. A world where a little girl’s talent could grow along with her hips and breasts. No one would nip it in the bud. Nana didn’t understand that, and she wasn’t alone; if you didn’t think so, all you had to do was listen in at one of those stupid meetings.
I think it’s a way out, Lila had said as the women stood in the tall grass, looking at that weird tree. And oh God, if she was right.
Elaine walked deeper into the auto supply shed, training the flashlight beam on the floor, because the floor was concrete, and concrete kept things cool. And there, in the far corner, was what she had been hoping for: three five-gallon cans with their pour-tops screwed down tight. They were plain metal, unmarked, but there was a thick red rubber band girdling one of them and blue bands around the other two. Her father had marked his tins of kerosene in exactly the same way.
I think it’s a way out. A way back. If we want it.
Some of them undoubtedly would. The Meeting women who couldn’t understand what a good thing they had here. What a fine thing. What a safe thing. These were the ones so socialized to generations of servitude that they would eagerly rush back into their chains. The ones from the prison would, counterintuitively, probably be the first to want to go home to the old world, and right back into the pokey from which they’d been released. So many of these childish creatures were unable or unwilling to realize that there was nearly always some unindicted male co-conspirator behind their incarceration. Some man for whom they’d degraded themselves. In her years as a volunteer, Elaine had seen it, and heard it all a million times over. “He’s got a good heart.” “He doesn’t mean it.” “He promises he’ll change.” Hell, she was vulnerable to it herself. In the midst of that endless day and night, before they fell asleep and were transported, she’d almost let herself believe, in spite of everything she’d experienced with Frank in the past, that he would do what she asked, that he would get control of his temper. Of course, he hadn’t.
Elaine didn’t believe Frank could change. It was his male nature. But he had changed her. Sometimes she thought that Frank had driven her mad. To him, she was the scold, the taskmaster, the grating alarm bell that ended recess each day. It awed her, Frank’s obliviousness to the weight of her responsibilities. Did he actually believe it made her happy, having to remind him to pay bills, to pick up things, to keep his temper in check? She was certain that he actually did. Elaine was not blind: she saw that her husband was not a contented man. But he did not see her at all.
She had to act, for the sake of Nana and all the others. That was what had come into focus that very afternoon, even as Tiffany Jones was dying in that diner, giving up the last of her poor wrecked life so that a child might live.
There would be women who wanted to return. Not a majority, Elaine had to believe most of the women here were not so insane, so masochistic, but could she take that chance? Could she, when her own sweet Nana, who had shrunk into herself every time her father raised his voice—
Stop thinking about it, she told herself. Concentrate on your business.
The red band meant cheap kerosene, and would probably be of no more use to her than the gasoline stored under the town’s various service stations. You could douse a lit match in red-band kerosene once it was old. But those blue bands meant that a stabilizer had been added, and that kind might retain its volatility for ten years or more.
The Tree they’d found that day might be amazing, but it was still a tree, and trees burned. There was the tiger to reckon with, of course, but she would take a gun. Scare it away, shoot it if necessary. (She knew how to shoot; her father had taught her.) Part of her thought that might turn out to be a needless precaution. Lila had called the tiger and the fox emissaries, and to Elaine, that felt right. She had an idea that the tiger would not try to stop her, that the Tree was essentially unguarded.
If it was a door, it needed to be closed for good.
Someday Nana would understand, and thank her for doing the right thing.
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