Don't Kiss Me: Stories (11 page)

ME AND HARDY

0

We took a wrong turn after Hardy dinged that kid on his bike. I was screaming and Hardy was probably working out in his head why he didn’t stop and get that kid up off the ground, maybe cause the kid was all MY DAD’S GONNA JOHN DEERE YOUR PRIVATES WHEN I TELL HIM WHAT YOU DONE, and what that meant I still don’t know, there was blood on the kid’s mouth that was fake-looking, like he’d stopped for a Mountain Dew Code Red on his way to getting fucked up by our ’96 Sentra, and Hardy twisting an eyebrow tween his thumb and forefinger like he do when he’s stressed, and then Hardy put on the blinker, signaling to who I don’t know, there was no one around, it was past 9:30 in the p.m. and dark as a denim quilt out, but it seemed to give Hardy purpose, that blinker, and we veered careful around the kid and made a right and Hardy kept to the speed limit and we drove calmly on like we was on our way to the market for apples and milk. The kid had pounded our car as we passed, and it made me feel better, I don’t know about Hardy, but what kind of kid but a thug would pound on a car like that, no matter what the circumstances?

But anyway, that right turn took us off course, is the point. That’s how we come to find ourselves driving through Acres Landing.

1

At the entrance to Acres Landing we saw a baby in a wagon next to a sign that said
WAGON $2, BABY $5, OR 2 FOR $6.
We drove on past that. Sometimes in life you have to just tell yourself something is a prank being played on someone else, and you can’t worry about every baby in a wagon, I’m sure you get me.

Then we came to a Gas-n-Go that was the only source of light in a long while, and we stopped there so Hardy could fill er up and I could squeegee the fingerprints and blood off the car from the thug kid, and then I went in to use the ladies’ and stared at my face cause I didn’t have to pee but I didn’t want to come out just yet, then when I did come out there was Hardy grappling with a fat woman in a tank top, over what I couldn’t tell, the fat woman had him with one arm and Hardy’s face was like a blood-colored, disappointed pumpkin, and when I crept up close I could see the woman’s eyebrows was glittering, pierced from end to end I guess, there was a diamondy crust lining her nostrils, her ears was all metal, she had a jeweled sunburst on each cheek, glinty rings hung from her lips, and all in all she was jangling like a street whore’s purse at sunup. Hardy was mouthing something at me, and finally I got it, and I reached into the glove compartment and come up with his blade and I jammed it in the woman’s bready shuddering armfat, and Hardy broke free and kicked her in the bosom and she lost her purchase, that finally toppled her, and we broke out from that Gas-n-Go like I don’t know what.

2

(Before the drive Hardy and I had mixed the last of his daddy’s dried mushroom pellets into our bottle of Lipton iced tea that was more Aftershock than tea usually. I’m just telling you not cause you need to know our business but cause I can tell you wondering why we didn’t start freaking our shit. The thug and the baby and the fatty and all. When you on psychedelics and liquor and no sleep you do your best not to freak your shit. Is what I’m saying.)

We drove for a while, Hardy got his breath and color back and the night hurtled by us like a train. Then the gravel started hitting the windshield and curving around into the car and stinging our arms and we rolled up the windows. It got worse, it got to where Hardy made to turn on the wipers till he realized that was stupid. Then we seen this glinting in the distance, getting brighter, then brighter, then we was right upon it, a bonfire with a stretcher hoisted up above it, and something black and writhing on the stretcher, and a cur dog hunched next to it, shitting at the stretcher’s base, watching our car pass by with the slow turn of its mangy head, and then I threw up into my purse, that’ll happen with mushrooms, or maybe it was the smell, either way.

3

Hardy told me the story about Santa Claus coming down the chimney, to make me feel better, he did the voice even, the Ho ho ho and all that mess, I actually don’t care for that story cause I hate fat old men, all of them without question, but Hardy likes to tell it. Then we came to the dunes, the trees breaking off on both sides and the dunes revealed there in the night like monuments, like the fancy graves you sometimes see on TV, and I rolled down my window. Hardy got on me for not listening and we started in and he yanked my hair and I clawed his cheek, cause I ain’t no delicate sunflower juddering in your grandma’s vase, and I left jagged tracks dotted with blood, and he swerved trying to gouge my eye and screamed like a woman on a roller coaster so I rolled up my window and daubed at the blood with my shirt hem, and he shut up.

4

We had finally driven into the habitable portion of Acres Landing, a bunch of trailer homes and double wides at diagonals to the road, a trotting dog and the yellow glow of a cat’s eyes, a boy with a pail out front his house doing nothing, just holding his pail, and I could relate to that, believe me. Doing nothing is the cross we have to bear. I waved to the boy and under the sickly yellow of his porch light I watched him mouth Stupid bitch at me, real slow, and then he reached into his pail and pulled out a fistful of something goopy and flung it at the car. I said, Mud, Hardy, that shitty child just threw mud at us, and then they was everywhere, more shitty children, all with mud, all chanting, Stupid Bitch. Stupid Bitch. I cracked the window and screamed, The name’s Nancy, you shithead children, and then I could smell it, it wasn’t mud but the children’s own soupy excrement, some of it was green and nearly neon and I wondered was it Kool-Aid that done it or some kind of illness, and was that a whole intact kidney bean sliding down the windshield, this is the way my mind works due to all the detectiving, I can’t help it nor do I try to, and anyway Hardy pushed on the gas and we flew out of there.

5

By now our high had leveled to the point where the world was a disappointment. Hardy lit a cigarette and another after that was done and then another and we passed them back and forth until the car was filled with smoke. We weren’t taking no chances having the windows down. Hardy said, If we ever make it there I don’t want to hear it from you when I drop you off. I hate it when he tells me how to act, and I was miserable enough to put the cigarette out in the tender flesh of my inner arm, but instead I rolled down my window cause Fuck it, see?

6

Hardy had wipered the shit off the windshield before it could dry and in its wake was a crescent moon of smeared clarity. Even so it was that time of night when you understand that the light of day is just a trick, a illusion, dumb as you are believing in it as you go about your grocery getting and your errands and your cheerful petting of a strange dog. I knew if I hadn’t left that blade stuck in that lady’s arm I’d have held it to Hardy’s throat right then, all my high gone and the Lipton bottle dry as a bone, but see after the part in my imagining when I held the knife to Hardy’s throat I couldn’t figure out what came next, it just seemed like it’d be a lot of work, whatever it was.

7

I had fallen asleep finally and when I awoke the sun was flashing like a coin in a white dish, so bright I had to close my eyes again, I watched the ghost of the coin dart around my eyelids for a while, it helped with the deciding and it stayed there when I yanked the wheel, even as we started going over there was the coin, the car turning in the air, my heart in my throat and then in my stomach, Hardy with that roller-coaster-bitch screaming again, and all the while I made sure to keep my eyes closed, cause I needed the dark, see, for the courage or whatever, and then we had come to a stop and I opened my eyes and we was upside down and the blood oozing out of Hardy’s ears like red candle wax, slow and thick, I thought he was a goner but then I saw him breathe so I pushed my way out the window and climbed back up to the road and flagged you down and let you drive me, and all right fine, to answer your question I left him there cause he wasn’t finished being there yet, I don’t know what else to tell you.

BIRTHDAY LUNCHEON

Your brother’s pregnant girlfriend got her leg up on the desserts cart, thrusting her hips over the lemon meringue, your daddy’s favorite, you can see the words
Sweet Bitch
in glitter script in the front part of her undies every time the cart rolls a little, which it does a lot, she dancing so thoroughly her shoe fell off a song ago, she bent to get it but the bending didn’t fit with the beat of the song so she let it be, and you felt like maybe that meant she was smarter than you gave her credit for, and you thought that even when she dipped her toe in a lava cake and then tried to lick it off till she realized she don’t bend that far and did a sloppy, arcing kick so she could brandish that toe in your daddy’s face, your daddy with that paper cone askew on his head, that elastic cutting into all that flesh at his jaw, your daddy with his small black eyes and his big wet mouth and that nipple of mashed potatoes on his shirt, your daddy who once asked you, could you come here, come closer, and belched your name right into your face and asked you to guess what he ate for dinner, your daddy who told your brother ladies’d get wet over a cocktail wiener if it was wrapped in twenties, your daddy who told you if you went to the Walmart past ten at night you’d be raped by a gang of blacks in the lightbulbs aisle, and later it changed to a gang of Mexicans, your daddy who punched your brother in the mouth the night he told about getting his girlfriend pregnant, your daddy who called that girlfriend a slut Oreo on Christmas Day, your daddy who could surely read the words on your brother’s girlfriend’s panties crotch despite his cataracts, your daddy who swatted that foot out his face like a poisonous insect, your daddy raised up that fist, that hammered clump of knuckles, and pounded the table so hard his little sippy cup of tea and gin fell off the table, your brother saying, Well, Pop, and your daddy saying his meanest, something beyond words, something close to Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, gums wet and pink as something just birthed, and you just watching that tea and gin spurt out your daddy’s straw and onto the crazy quilt of a carpet they had in this place, and when you looked up the old man from the next table was behind your brother’s girlfriend, slapping her thigh and bouncing on his toes like he was playing at riding a horse, and your brother’s girlfriend moving slower cause it was a slow song now, both her feet on the ground, eyes closed, and the old man not getting it, riding his horse out of time with the beat, it was unsettling, it was rude, you found yourself muttering, Are you serious? Are you serious? like you was tasered or something, your step-aunt leaning across the table and salad-mouthing, Serious bout what, hon? and your brother twitching like he’d just come to life, your brother saying, Serious bout your face mole, and your step-aunt dabbing at her face with the corner of a napkin, that mole the color of Thousand Island dressing, ringed in red now from being dabbed at, your daddy’s dead wife’s sister who your daddy had to stay the night every now and again, they was a pair, your daddy in his wheelchair and your step-aunt in her scooter, your brother told you they just rammed wheels and tallied that up as sex, the jostling was enough he said, and now when you get the chance to have some yourself you think of it as jostling, Jostle me, you want to say into a man’s neck, Jostle me good, your brother’s girlfriend walking the old man back to his seat now, limping on her one shoe, the old man’s family eyeing your brother’s girlfriend with red faces and slit eyes, the old man’s daughter saying, All right now, your brother’s girlfriend saying, You welcome, sug, stopping on her way back to the table to pick her undies out her ass, your brother arranging the cutlery around her plate like it was the return of the mother of Jesus, your daddy eating his meat loaf like a slice of pizza, your daddy didn’t take no puree, I eat sholidsh, your brother mixing your daddy another sippy, your brother’s girlfriend cutting up that dish of meringue into little pellets for your daddy to maw on, your step-aunt fluffing her bangs with one hand and worrying that mole with the other, your daddy’s legs poking out his shorts like something veined and obscene, your daddy who you told when you thought they was goblins in your closet, your daddy who said, Got that right and snapped off the light, and now you thinking how you ain’t hungry for dessert, you thinking how you don’t know what you hungry for, you eyeing that carpet and thinking how there was a time when a spill like that’d remind you quick just how much a man your daddy was, all teeth eyes belt and fist.

LETA’S MUMMY

Leta got a mummy up under the floorboards. You could see it rising when her daddy’s got the TV too loud or when her brother lights up the toilet with his beer shits. That mummy is a shit-hating kind of mummy. One thing about Leta’s mummy is, it’ll take a bite if you ain’t paying mind. So you got to always try to look like you don’t taste all that good. Leta lost a chunk of her hand to that mummy and the worst thing is, it just gummed on it for a while and let it thud to the floor along with the rest of its cheek. Then it bayed like its heart was broken and shrunk down into the floor. Leta’s daddy told her hush, least he didn’t get you in the titty or the face, and I nodded and Leta tried to nod, but it’s hard to when your mouth can’t close cause you screaming.

I spend a lot of time over to Leta’s cause my momma works nights and when she don’t she is on our back porch with her Dixie cup. Sometimes she get to wailing and I just got to go. Then I come back in the morning and wash out her cup like nothing. To me the worst part about the mummy ain’t its appetite for flesh or the fact that it smell like infinity diapers, all on fire. It’s when it bays like it do, cause it sounds like my momma. Both of em just crying like they stuck, like they brain got sucked out and tears put back in its place.