Wire Mesh Mothers (7 page)

T
he teacher was going to take her on a ride. Mistie didn't know this woman, but she'd seen her on the school playground sometime. The teacher wore bright lipstick and had pointy eyebrows and smelled good like the soaps and hand lotion Mama had tried to sell from that pretty catalog. The teacher had told Mistie what her name was but Mistie had forgotten it.

Now, the two of them were in the teacher's classroom. Mistie sat in a desk the teacher had pushed behind her own desk. The desk wasn’t like the second grade desks. This one was bigger and there were papers and books inside. "Sit there," the teacher had said. "Don't get up, okay? Can you sit still for just a few minutes? I need to get a few things before we go."

And so Mistie sat in the desk, looking alternately at the dots on the ceiling and the rows of little clay houses in the classroom window sills. Some of the clay houses were painted, some of them were plain. Some were cracked. Some looked like they hadn't been finished.
 

The teacher said, "We’re studying ancient man. Those are supposed to be early native homes from the southwest." The teacher was talking really fast and her voice went up and down like a cat when you squeezed its stomach. "Some of the boys and girls did a very nice job, don't you think?"

Mistie didn't. She looked at the ceiling again. Her stomach growled. She poked at it, making it growl some more.

The teacher had a big cloth tote bag with writing on it and a picture of an apple. The teacher crammed in books and a few things out of her desk drawer. "My senior annual," she said, holding up a blue and orange book. "I can't leave this behind. I graduated from the University of Virginia nearly twenty years ago, can you believe that? Yes, I'm just an old Wahoo.
Wa-hoo-wa
! Well."

Mistie put her hand between her legs and rubbed hard until it got hot.

"Mistie, don't do that," said the teacher. "Please. Okay? Mistie?
 
Here, here's a Tootsie Pop I took from one of my students. It’s raspberry I think. Hard to tell raspberry from cherry in this light.
Here.
"

Mistie took the sucker, unwrapped it, and stuck it in her mouth.

"Okay, all right," said the teacher. Her lips kept moving around like she was tasting something sour. "A little food and some drinks, then the bank, and we'll be off. It's going to be a nice trip, Mistie. Oh, it's going to be fantastic. You'll see. We're both going to have a wonderful, wonderful time." She paused, placed her hands on her hips, and glanced about. There was sweat over her eyebrows. It looked like the sweat on Mistie’s Daddy’s eyebrows at night. "Now, what else do I need, is this it? What time is it? I think we can go now. Most everyone is out of here by now. Mistie, button your coat, please. It's very cold outside."

Mistie stood and buttoned her coat. She took the sucker out, looked at it, then bit the red orb off and spit it into the air. "Mama had a baby and its head popped off," she said.

"Oh?" said the teacher. "Fine, then. Let's go." She reached for Mistie's hand but Mistie didn't want to hold her hand. But when the teacher said, "Come follow me. And be just like Elmer
Fudd
, okay? Ever see him on cartoons? Be
vewry
,
vewry
quiet," Mistie was.

I
t was a few minutes before four o'clock. As Kate had hoped, most of the faculty and staff had left for the afternoon, hitting the road for home and putting as much space between themselves and the school as possible in the least amount of time. Mr. Byron's pickup was still in his reserved spot nearest the flagpole but
 
he was required to stay until five. The gray Toyota next to it belonged to Miriam Calhoun. She would stay as late as Mr. Byron stayed. There were three other cars belonging to teachers. Some liked to stay after and grade papers. Kate used to be like that.

Kate's own white Volvo was one of the three, sitting on the far side of the parking lot because she’d arrived too late that morning to get one of the choice spots near the front. Kate led Mistie out the back of the school, by the exterior of the gym, the cafeteria, and the row metal trash bins. Kate paused and peeked around the wall. She almost laughed aloud, but bit it back.
Good for you, Nancy Drew!
she thought.

When Kate was quite certain there was no one on the long front walk or milling about the lot, she hustled the girl to the Volvo, pulled open the back door, and helped Mistie inside. "Just sit way down,” she whispered in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Sit way down for just a little while. You can get up in little while, promise. Okay? Mistie?”
 

Mistie didn’t seem to understand. Kate demonstrated, slumping low and peeking back at Mistie around the side of her seat. “Like this. Pretend you’re real short.”

Mistie didn’t argue, and she scooted down far enough that Kate was pretty sure the top of her head couldn’t be seen from anyone outside the car.
 

“Good,” said Kate. “Thanks.” She patted the girl on the head. The hair was sticky. On the floor of the back was a quilt Kate kept in the car in case she’d ever been caught in a blizzard, while she hadn’t. Kate carefully draped the quilt over the girl. “We’re being secret, okay?”

Mistie didn’t say anything, but didn’t seem to mind the quilt.

The strange little girl had been amazingly easy to collect when the bell had rung. She’d been lagging behind most of the other students, her coat on backward. Kate had motioned Mistie aside when the bus duty teacher wasn't looking and said, "Won't you come to my class for a few minutes?" The dulled eyes didn't seem to register the request, but the body did. Mistie Henderson had obediently followed Kate down the hall and had sat in the desk while Kate had snatched up a few important items. Her grade book and some teacher manuals so it would appear she'd planned on returning the next day. Some change from her desk drawer for quick drinks later tonight. Her university yearbook,
Corks and Curls
, which she'd brought to school last week when notice of the upcoming twentieth reunion had arrived in the mail. During brief moments of free time, Kate had been flipping through the pages trying to re-associate herself with names and faces for the get-together in May. Donald thought they should certainly go, and she wanted to. One of the few things they’d agreed on in a long time. She’d gazed at Donald’s photo. Handsome, sandy blond, member of the Pep Band and Intramural Track Team. God, but he’d been a charmer, a
romancer
, a fast-spending, generous man who had seemed to Kate to be all the right things back in college. Kate had gazed at her own picture. A slight grin, hair straight and past her shoulders, her chin tipped up just a bit at the encouragement of the photographer. And then the photos of Alice and Bill, smiling placidly from a sea of other smiling fourth-year faces.

As her students had started to work on some problems she’d posted on the overhead projector, she’d pulled out the yearbook and looked at Alice again, then Bill. They knew what she was thinking, and they thought it was a splendid idea. Their approval had made the plan more than possible to Kate, it had seemed probable.
 

Canada was about a sixteen-hour drive straight north except through Pennsylvania which, for some reason, didn’t have any major highways leading north through the middle of the state; she’d have to go west and up. With enough high-octane soft drinks and coffee, Kate knew she could make it without sleep, though it would be one hell of a haul. The Volvo’s tank was full of gas, so any stop would be way north of here, somewhere in Never-Never Land where no one knew her or the Volvo or the child.

The Christmas cards Kate got yearly from Alice and Bill Harrison had the return address of
Bracebridge
Run, outside Toronto, Ontario. Chatty cards all, speaking of a lovely home full of adopted, handicapped children and adopted, stray pets. Alice and Bill had been friends of Kate during their university years. They had been social activists then and social activists still. Wild children they were themselves, hippie-holdovers at the University of Virginia when hippies had been out of fashion for nearly ten years. They’d worn long hair and flowing blouses and sandals and handmade clay beads around their necks and on their wrists. They’d been laughed at by the preps and the jocks who dominated the campus, but it all rolled off their backs like water on duck feathers.

Alice had gotten Kate interested and involved in some wonderful causes back in those days. Kate, a shy and quiet girl from a comfortably wealthy and politically disinterested family in Norfolk, had become involved in Amnesty International, the University Environmental League, and Friends of Animals - a very new movement at the time. She’d called home about her adventures; her sixteen-year-old sister Amy had said, “Just don’t get arrested,” and her father, chief accountant at Elizabeth River Financial, had told her “Honey, we love you. But do remember why you’re there, and that has more to do with books and papers than anything else.”
 

One particularly thrilling event was the clandestine rescue of a mangy, malnourished dog from the backyard of a skanky tar-paper shack outside town, then spiriting the pup to Kate’s dorm room to keep until Alice could arrange a proper home. Kate had kept the dog in her room for three days. The dog had smelled terribly. It had been covered with fleas and mites. One eye was puss-rimmed. But she’d minded the dog until one of the local Friends of Animals had agreed to take him in.

Kate had felt light-headed and giddy over the rescue. She’d done something incredibly worthwhile. She’d saved a life, just like the Underground Railroad did for the slaves before the American Civil War and the underground hiding places did for the Jews during World War II. Amy would have been amazed at the way her older sister had broken the law to help a poor, helpless creature.
 

The Friends of Animals held an event nearly every weekend, protesting outside a slaughterhouse in Albemarle County – “Meat? Would you kill and eat your brother, your sister?” – printing up and distributing brochures denouncing animal testing in the University’s biology department. Kate savored every daring moment. She felt a new life in her blood. She had discovered the thrill of doing.

And then she’d met Donald McDolen.

She had fallen in love. She’d skipped Friends meetings, had even returned to eating chicken and burgers on her dates with Donald. The Friends denounced Kate as a backsliding hypocrite, but Bill and Alice remained her friend.

Three days after graduation, Kate and Donald had married. And so it went. And so it had become.
  

Kate knew Alice and Bill would help her. They would be proud of Kate, reclaiming her power to do right. They would hail the delivering angel.
 

In the driver's seat, Kate pulled the rearview around to look at herself. Kate forced her eyes to relax. She knew how to perform. She'd kept her cool during conferences with parents when their bodies reeked and their breaths came out like fumes from rotten blast furnaces. Kate knew how to play the role. No one would suspect the woman at the wheel to be a kidnapper.
 

"Mistie, you okay back there? We're going on a little ride and soon, you can sit up front with me. All right?”

Mistie sneezed, and Kate took that as a sign she hadn’t suffocated to death under the quilt. She hoped Mistie had covered her nose but doubted it. Kate turned on the radio to FM 9.21. Oldies. “Build Me Up, Buttercup.”

The rearview was snapped back into position, the key was turned in the ignition. The car drove out of the lot, sliding down to the road as easily as a kid on a Water Park inner tube. Kate steered right onto Route 58 into the setting sun. She squinted and lowered the visor. She noticed her fingers were locked around the steering wheel like a drowning woman’s fingers locked about a stick. She forced them to loosen. Her knuckles were cold.

“W
hat the hell you waiting for?” called Darlene from the sinkhole. Tony glanced back from the roadside and gave her sister the finger, though her hand was cold and she couldn’t really feel the finger wiggle.

“Where you
goin
’ dressed like that? You look like a clown! It ain’t Halloween, dumb ass!”

Tony turned away. She used to enjoy getting into it with her sister, loved to argue her and then punch her into the ground, but anymore it was a waste of time. Darlene was stupid as a slug. Let her get into it with the twins. Darlene was so brainless, an argument with Judy or Jody could keep her busy for hours.

Tony had much more important matters at hand.

Overhead, the sky had grown heavy and thick with impending sleet. The air smelled wet and metallic. Tony shook her head, and she could feel the blood ringing just behind her ears. Her arms and legs ached with the cold, but the revolver in her pocket was hot. The knife in her shoe was rubbing a blister, and it felt good.

Tony wasn’t exactly sure of the time because she didn’t wear a watch, though she had one. It was in her bedroom in the dresser with other stupid trash her family had given her for Christmases. It was a girly watch, a nasty, pink-banded watch with some sort of orange swirly pearly shit on the face. She’d been given it four years ago when she was eleven. Back when she still let them call her Angela. Back before she knew the truth of the matter, the reality of the world. Fuck it all, she’d been ignorant.