The Memory Thief (23 page)

“Somethin’ I can help you with, honey?”

Hannah nodded and looked past her into the house. They had money. Not as much as Father, but still enough to line the floors
with rich hardwoods. To have fresh flowers on the dining table. A piano in the corner. On its edge was a framed family portrait.
A man and woman, their arms hugged around the girl from the front porch. The girl’s smile was so real and sweet.

“You sellin’ somethin’? I don’t really need anything,” she said, as she started to shut the door.

“My mother brought you a baby, years ago,” Hannah said.

The woman’s mouth fell open. She started to shake her head and Hannah hurried to finish. “I don’t want to meet her. I just
wanted to tell you thank you, because she looks so happy. You did a fine job. Do you think… would it be too much… since she’s
already left… do you think I could see her room? Just a quick peek?”

“This ain’t part of the deal,” the woman whispered.

Hannah shook her head. “I’m not going to speak to her or anything like
that. I just want to see the place she grew up.”

“A thousand dollars,” the woman said. “That’s what the deal was. You all could park your car and stalk us all day. But you
weren’t supposed to come knockin’. Do you know that my husband would kill me if he knew I’d made a deal with crazy people?
That I agreed to pretend our daughter was theirs? I did it for college money, but he wouldn’t care. He’s due home any minute
now, so you gotta go.”

“Wait,” Hannah whispered as the woman closed the door in her face. “You mean it isn’t her?”

Hannah sat in the car the whole way home thinking about the two of them. How both of them were such liars. Hannah’s lies about
deep water and T-shirts. Mother’s about Baby and where she had gone.

When Mother finally parked the car that night, Hannah did her best to please her.

“Thank you, Mother. You’ve made it all better now.” They walked inside together, Mother’s arm gently wrapped around Hannah’s
waist. But the lie sat heavy on Hannah’s tongue, and she shivered when she stopped in front of the Great Room window. She
studied her reflection in the glass, blinked her eyes, and saw Aunt Leah with her slim curves. Leah with her very own golden
halo of hair. She took a step closer, until she heard Leah, too. Pounding out a new war cry within her. She nodded her head.

I want
…
I want
…
I want
…

A
NGEL

“Thought you was dead,” a man whispered above me. “You ain’t, are you? Can you move?”

My eyes, trained to find anything that glitters, saw the silver canteen that flashed on his belt. I wanted to reach for it.
But my arms wouldn’t lift when I told them to. He followed my gaze, unscrewed the top of the canteen and held it to my lips.

“I was trackin’ bear. Saw you against this tree and thought you was dead. It ain’t that unusual. Tourists come down to hike,
can’t find their way out. Start walkin’ crazy circles and such, either starve or freeze. From the looks of it, you were gettin’
close yourself. I bet you’d of been gone in a day or so. How’d you end up out here? We’re a good day’s walk from town.”

He laid his coat over me, and the shock of sudden warmth pulled me into a deep sleep. When I woke up I was being lifted onto
the back of an ATV. A policeman drove and the bear-man rode behind him and held me like a baby. We raced through the forest.
My eyes blinked as dead gray limbs flashed overhead. I slept again, and woke up as they wheeled me into the hospital.

The policeman started asking me questions.

“I need to report a missin’ person,” I mumbled.

“Someone else up there? You wasn’t alone?”

“Me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the missin’ person.”

I spent the first two days asleep in the hospital. And when I woke up they asked more questions.
What is your name?
Then they asked where I was from. I remembered hell burning behind Black Snake trailer. Acres and acres, glowing red with
fire. Police cars, their blue lights flashing against flat bacca leaves.

“Can’t remember a thing,” I whispered.

Some of them heard it for the lie it was. Looked at me with narrowed eyes and tight lips when I said it. One nurse even warned
me, “They’ll bill you as Jane Doe if they have to.” Others treated me with pity. Like I’d lost my mind on the mountain. These
nurses did more than bring me vitamins, bags of sugar water for my IV, and hospital meals. They bought me dessert from a vending
machine with change from their own pockets. They marched happy people, wearing pastel name tags that read
Volunteer
, by my bed, “in case I needed a friend.” They’d whisper sweetly, sad smiles on their faces, “Honey, you ’member who you are
yet?”

I’d shake my head no and nibble the candy they brought. They ran a story about me in the paper:

BOONE, NC: Authorities are seeking information concerning the identity of a young woman discovered in the mountains last week.
She was found alone and disoriented in the forest, several miles outside of Boone. She appears to be in her late teens, five
feet four inches, with long white blond hair and brown eyes. If you have any information regarding her identity, please contact
local authorities.

I imagined sliding that little piece of newspaper across our family dinner table.
Nearly died tryin’ to get to you.

There was a knock at my door.

“Know your name yet?” a policeman asked, as he walked in. “Ever been over the mountain, to Tennessee? They’re looking for
a blond girl, about your age, set fire to a farm. Burned half of it down. That wouldn’t be why you can’t remember your name,
would it?”

“Never been to Tennessee,” I said.

“I’m gonna go make some calls about you. I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll chat some more. You rest up now.”

As the door closed behind him, I pulled the IV out of my arm. Put my cutoffs back on and prepared to leave. But just as I
put my hand on the knob, someone was coming in.

It was the volunteer again. My “friend” in case I needed one.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Your IV fall out? That happens sometimes.
You lie down and I’ll get a nurse to tend to it.”

I cursed under my breath but returned to my bed. The volunteer reached for my hand when the nurse had to prick my arm to find
a new vein. But I jerked away from her. “It don’t hurt,” I mumbled.

When the nurse left, the volunteer sat at the edge of my bed. “I can only imagine how scared you must be. And if you’re in
some sort of trouble, if that’s why you can’t remember who you are, then I want to let you know that I can help you. There’s
lots of reasons for why people make the choices they do. I don’t know why you were out there alone, or what you were running
from. But I’d like to help make you safe again. I’ve got lots of resources at my disposal.”

“I just want out of here. Can you do that for me?”

“Will you go home? Back to wherever you were, before you got lost on the mountain?”

I shook my head. It was the reason I struck the match. Not to burn the memories until they looked as worthless as they were. The candy that Daddy collected. The dishes that Momma
threw. The bucket where the gun used to sit. That was all sweet extra.

The real reason I burned that trailer was so that no matter what else happened I could never go back. I might get lost on
a mountain and almost die. And there might be a moment when I’d think about Black Snake trailer, how warm it could be come
winter with just a tiny kerosene heater set in the center. And that moment, that imagined warmth, was the reason I burned
it. It was one thing, maybe the only thing, that I could promise my future. No matter what, I would never have to run from
Black Snake trailer again.

“Winter’s coming, honey. I can tell you’re scared. I can see you don’t wanna run back into that cold forest. Just say the
word and I’ll help make you safe.”

I hated her, even though I knew it made me more redneck than Black Snake trailer ever did. I winced at the thought of that
word,
redneck
, a curse I’d heard many times over the years, just like
trailer trash
. Those words meant many things, but they all started with land. How we didn’t own any. We plowed it, planted it, picked it,
and helped sell off its goods. But we did not own it and neither would our children’s children. Land was a right reserved
for the farm kings. A right reserved for those born of DAR blood. For those that could hang signs on the corners of farms:
Established 1893.

I never doubted I was trailer trash. Knew it from my cutoffs and my black bras peeking out from my knotted-up T-shirts. My
clothes were given to me from a closet at school, or left behind from Janie. But I’m the one who chose how to wear them. I’m the one who tied knots, whenever it served my purpose, to show off my belly.

Redneck.
The word I really feared, the one hissed at Momma. Once, a new super grocery opened up forty minutes away, just off the highway.
The gas station was close and stocked almost everything our kitchen needed. But Momma heard Mrs. Swarm, and then another farmhand’s
wife, mention the super grocery. So one day she drove us up to see.

Everything was shiny, especially the bright new buggies waiting for shoppers to fill with their food. Old women with green
aprons stood behind carts and passed out samples. We took their crackers and spreads and nibbled like real ladies would.

Something came over Momma. A wanting, or maybe a hope. She lifted me high and stuffed me down into a buggy, so she could push
me the way other mothers pushed their babies. But I was eight, and my long legs dangled halfway to the floor.

We went up every aisle slowly. Momma stumbling over the words of all the new foods.

“Angel,” she whispered. “They even got the Chinese food here.” We stared at bottles of soy sauce and cans of water chestnuts.
“Ain’t nothin’ you can’t eat now. If it’s a food in this world, then it’s here in this store.”

She put soy sauce in the buggy. And a taco kit. And something so wonderful I never dreamed it could exist. Star fruit. I held
it in my grubby hands, knowing at last what it was I had hungered for my whole life. I closed my eyes and imagined stars sitting
on my tongue.

At the cashier line I noticed Momma’s bones more than usual. She stood differently. With her shoulders pulled tight and her
arms folded over her body. Then she raised her hand over her eyes to look out the window and sighed loudly.

“Oh dear. Looks like the weather man was right. I do believe a rain cloud is coming and I’ve forgotten my umbrella.”

“But Momma,” I said, and laughed. “We ain’t got no umbrella.”

Someone giggled behind us. Momma looked down at the ground and I knew from the burn in her face that I’d messed up. Maybe
even hurt her. I just wasn’t sure how.

“Five twenty-two,” the cashier said.

Momma never carried a purse. She pulled a five out of her front pocket. Then reached into another. And then another. And then
her last one. She shook her head.

“Damn it,” she whispered to the ground.

“I got it,” a woman behind us said, as she held out a quarter.

She was everything we were trying to be. With smooth blond
hair cut short to make it swing cheerfully with every move. Soft pink lipstick and matching nail polish. Leather purse on
her shoulder, probably filled with good money. And sitting in the front of her buggy was a well-scrubbed baby, wearing a clean
new sundress and matching bonnet.

“I forget my purse all the time, too,” the woman said sweetly.

Sticky goodness surrounded us. Flowed from the sugary sound of her voice that made it clear she’d never hurt anyone. Never
tossed a dish at her husband. Never passed out drunk. Never slapped her baby’s mouth or demanded an early prize. And her boldness,
her assumption that help was wanted, made it clear that she’d never been hurt, either. That she’d lived a life so safe she
could afford to let her strength flow down to people like me and Momma.

I hated her because she was so perfect. Because she’d never been hurt before. And I loved her, too. Because I knew she was
good. I wanted her to lift me up and put me in her buggy. Put a brand-new pink sundress on me and make a fuss over tying my
hat just right.

Momma just hated her.

“To hell with your free food.” She jerked me from the buggy. My long legs got stuck getting out. My shoe popped off. Showed
my mismatched socks with holes all over the toes.

“Git your damn shoes on. And git you a pair of decent socks next time.”

“Star fruit?” I whined. “How ’bout we just git that?”

She walked away and I ran behind her. But before we left, someone whispered the truth. “
Redneck.
”

It wasn’t my socks. Or that Momma didn’t have a purse or an umbrella or enough money. They called her redneck because she
didn’t know how to accept kindness. It made her angry. Made her cuss at her baby and run with shame.

Later that night, she cried over her whiskey.

“She didn’t look at me, Angel. She looked at the cashier, at her own baby, at the quarter in her hand. Her words lied, said,
‘We’re the same, me and you.’ But not her eyes. Her eyes called me everything her mouth wouldn’t.”

That day in the hospital I looked up at that kind volunteer, at her black eyes and warm brown skin, at the pretty patchwork
scarf tied around her shoulders, and I hated her for trying to help me. For acting like she wanted to fix all that was broken
inside me.

“Sorry,” I hissed. “Daddy taught me long ago not to trust a gook. What you wanna do, feed me dog or somethin’? You best just
git out and leave me be.”

She did, and then I whispered “Redneck” to myself. She was dressed too nice. With her starched blouse and patent flats. With
her smooth black hair, cut into a silky bob. And she saw me too honest. My fear, my danger, before my angry eyes. She offered
the thing I needed most, and I cursed her for it. I wasn’t raised to expect kindness. You didn’t keep me long enough to teach
me any different.