The Memory Thief (28 page)

After a moment, the door opened slightly. “This is against house rules, Angel. You’re never supposed to leave your room after
curfew without—”

“But there’s work for us to do.”

She started to protest, but peered from behind the door and saw my face. She nodded. “Very well. I’ll come to the library
in five minutes.”

In the library I laid out a picture. Of a slick green car with a muscled man washing it. There was a bare-chested little girl
holding a tin full of water behind him. Five years old and nothing to cover. I stared at the picture and tried to remember
the speech I had rehearsed for so many years. But the words wouldn’t come. All I could think about was how that car belonged
to me. My first crib.

“Mrs. Rey?” I whispered when she walked in.

She bowed her head as she sat down across from me. We sat in silence for several minutes. I waited, watching her, until finally
she answered, “Yes.” She looked up then, tried to smile. “It’s no accident that you are here, Angel.”

“I left Tennessee to find my mother. And instead I found you. The one that got in the way. Where is she?”

“I found
you,
Angel. First in the newspaper. A story about a young girl lost in the mountains. The right age, the right build, the right
hair color. I sent my Bethie to see you. Why do you think the same volunteer kept showing up day after day? Did you really
think she just wanted to be your friend? She watched you. Heard the things you cried out for in your dreams. And reported
it all back to me.”

“The gook?” I whispered in disbelief.

“She’s Filipino. She’s your aunt. She lives down the mountain. After she told me the things I needed to hear, I knew I had
to see you. One look and I knew. You were the child.”

I watched as tears filled her eyes. As she started to speak and then stopped, because she didn’t trust herself not to weep.

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“We lost her years ago.”

“And I look like her?” I cried.

She nodded again. “So much.”

“And you’re the one that sold me?”

“Yes.”

“Did she want you to?”

She shook her head. “There are so many things I must explain.”

I held my hands up in the air between us. “I don’t want your excuses.”

“Let me just—”

“What about me? Don’t you want to hear what you did? I’ve carried it all, here in my pockets, like tourist souvenirs. Just
so one day I could show her. Give her back a piece of everything you took away.”

“I turned your past over to prayer years ago. It’s your future I need you to trust me with. Whatever happened, whatever fills
your pockets, give me a chance to replace it. I’ll give you new treasure.”

I slid the picture over to her. “This was my daddy. He’s the one that taught me how to pray.”

She stared at the picture, but I wanted more.

“Pick it up,” I growled. I wanted her to see me, a five-year-old baby girl. The one she gave away. “You bought that car, you
know. It’s how I learned about love. I’d watch Daddy’s face, the way he looked at it, the way he called it Baby. That’s how
I learned what love looks like.”

“Forgive me,” she groaned. “Please.”

“No,” I said, as I grabbed for the picture, held it tight against my chest.

I stared out the window behind the couch, as the old woman wept. The sky seemed darker than ever before. Like every star tumbled
at once and left behind a perfect sheet of black. A place where a mother could never be born. A place where a daughter would
always be lost.

“Turns out Daddy was right all along.”

“No, that’s not what love is supposed to look like.”

“He was right about you.”

“What?”

I smiled. “ ‘Woman,’ Daddy used to shout. ‘If you scare her enough, she’ll give more money.’ They spoke of you, nearly every
day. They hunted for you. Cursed each other for not knowin’ how to find you. Because they wanted one thing. Because to us,
to my family, you are only good for one thing.”

I looked at her as she waited for me to speak. My eyes went dry. My throat tightened so sobs could not escape. And my face
twisted into something ugly. Something mean and cruel, that belonged at Black Snake trailer. “
More
,” I whispered.

“Money? You think money will fix you?”

I nodded.

“I want you to stay. I’ll pay you to stay.”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars to stay.”

“You’ll pay more, and you’ll want me to leave.”

“Where will you go?”

“I want twenty-five thousand dollars.”

She sighed loudly. “But where will you go? What will you do?”

“Live,” I whispered.

“And you think money is all that’s needed to do that? What about after it’s spent? How will you live then?”

“I’ve turned profits dancin’ half naked on a biscuit counter. I did it for the money, but the woman you gave me to would have
done it for free.”

“You’ll end up right back in the trailer. Is that how you want to live?”

“Livin’ was always the easy part. It was the not dyin’ that was hard. My momma had this gun, kept it by her bed at night.
Sometimes I couldn’t sleep for the way it called out to me through the night.” I looked at her, the misery across her face.
I felt a surge of victory. “You want to know what it said to me?”

“I already do,” she cried loudly. “Every word it spoke, I know by heart. And money won’t make it hush, Angel.”

I laughed softly, even as tears dripped down my face. It was a trick I’d seen Momma do so many times. It used to confuse me
the way she could sit on our couch and laugh and cry at the same time. But as I sat before that old woman, I finally understood.
It wasn’t that Momma was crazy or didn’t know what she really felt. It was that she felt the joke of her life, the hurt and
anger over it, all at once. Like me, sitting there before my grandmother, the woman that sold me away. I was angry and sad,
too. But the joke wasn’t lost on me, either. About how all the bad things in my life had so perfectly trained me for one thing:
how to get
More
.

“Ain’t been a year since I robbed a dead man. Momma made me, ’cause she thought that dead man owed her. Now you’re the one
that owes me. And if I have to, I will wait for you to kill over dead.”

She pulled a checkbook from her pocket. Wrote the right numbers, signed the right name. “We’ll go to the bank tomorrow. It’s
too late tonight. Return to your room, and in the morning I’ll help you set up an account for twenty-five thousand dollars.
But once you leave here, do not return for more. This twenty-five is my final payment where you are concerned. Do you understand
me?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, as I left the library. “You’re finally rid of me for good.”

I returned to my room, sat down on the bed, and stared at the check. I tried my best to feel happy. I let my finger trace
the numbers. I let my mind imagine the spending. The clothes. The food. Shiny silver buggies filled to the top with star fruit.

Just an hour earlier, I had been poor. Redneck, too. But as I sat, holding that check and dreaming of all the ways I could
spend it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would leave that mountain poorer than when I arrived. I’d lost the hope of you.

I fell across the bed, let my hand drop to the side. I pushed against the mattress in search of that bottle that always brought
relief. I held it up before me, tried to find the strength to return it to the mattress. Whiskey was what I needed to escape
Momma and Daddy. It was what I needed to feel warm, when night winds were my bedtime blanket. There in that bed, with Momma
and Daddy far away and so much money in my hands, I made a promise:
I don’t need whiskey anymore…

But I was born a liar. And so I brought that bottle to my mouth, over and over in the dark. Because no matter how safe I was,
no matter how rich or warm, whiskey was the only thing that silenced the noise. Of a thousand drunken screams. Of a hundred
dishes being broken. Of Janie crying alone somewhere in jail. Of her baby being handed off to strangers, just like I was.

I put that bottle to my lips, found silence, and fell asleep. It was just a quick fix, that quiet whiskey numb. Some new noise
would usually reach through the whiskey and startle me awake. Sometimes it was a tractor starting before dawn. Or maybe an
animal running through the bacca. Once I woke up to a crashing noise. Heard leaves, just a couple rows over, being stamped
down. I hugged my knees to my chest and scooted close to the plants. A baby’s effort to hide. The noise came closer and I
cried, thinking a mean stray dog, the kind that would want to look me in the eye, was hunting me down.

But then something leaped, just out of my reach. And then leaped again. Deer. A whole pack of them running through the bacca.
Leaping between the rows. It was all over in a couple of seconds. Their speed, their soft brown hides that Daddy liked to rub his car down with, vanished, and I was alone.

I tried to tell Janie about it later. And the only word my baby mind could think to describe it was
Fireworks.
Because it was beautiful. Because it made me feel hot and scared and happy all at once. Because it was over in a flash.

That night at Red Castle was no different. Something ruined my whiskey quiet. A new noise that didn’t belong in the middle
of my night. Like the sound of fingers snapping. And then there was a voice. I sat up in bed and hugged my knees to my chest.
I scooted under the covers and hid, like a broke-down dog. I reached for my whiskey, as the echo bounced inside my head.

Click. Click. Click.
And then a whisper. About something sad. Like a thousand regrets. Like a hundred apologies. Like a deep sigh and shrug of
old shoulders… “For your own good.”

Morning came and I lay in bed, foggy from the night before. I was no longer an employee of Red Castle, and I welcomed the
liberty of extra rest. I missed breakfast in the alley. And when it was time for lunch, I didn’t bother dressing in my uniform.
I slid on my old cutoffs and sweatshirt. Grabbed my check and prepared to leave.

I turned for a last look. At that bed, that beautiful bed, with its lace and handmade quilt. At the carving above my door,
which I’d never be able to understand, never be able to own. I reminded myself of the new treasure in my pocket. Twenty-five
thousand dollars. I reached for the door.

But then something happened. Something that made me fall back and look nervously around the room. That made the old fears
of my childhood swarm over me. Fears about monsters waiting. About feet that need to run and can’t.

Daddy had come across Janie in the fields. She had a picnic spread for a farmhand date. But all the food was Daddy’s. The
pimento cheese he loved. The baloney and crackers he craved. The coke that we all preferred to drink flat before we’d drink
the limestone-filled water.

He didn’t say anything when he found them. But when he went home he opened the fridge and saw that she had left him nothing.
Except the stale cornflakes Momma liked, and the potted meat and canned sausages that we pretended was ham. He remembered
the way he caught her feeding his crackers to that dirty farmhand. He ran to his bed, looked under the overturned bucket that
served as a nightstand. It was where he hid his collection. Some men, like Mr. Swarm, collected silver. Other men collected
pocket knives. Daddy collected sugar. Pieces of hard candy, flavored like cherries or limes. Half-eaten candy bars, because,
unlike Momma, he knew to savor luxury. To draw it out a bit, make it last as long as it could.

That day after finding Janie in the field, he turned the bucket over. She was too smart to take it all. But even I knew that
he counted his sweets. He stood over the little pile humming out numbers, stopped and growled lowly. Picked up the bucket
and threw it against the trailer wall. Janie had stolen four bits of Daddy’s best prize.

The next day, when we got off the bus, her dog was laying in the road. A bullet in his head. Black blood pooling under him
on the ground. The dog wasn’t really hers, in the way it would have been if she had bought it or raised it or even fed it. It was hers because it picked her. Out of everybody else on that farm, that dog stayed by Janie. It’d run to meet her
when we got off the bus. It’d wait outside the trailer for her in the mornings.

She named him Underfoot. Because that’s what Momma always cussed when she saw the dog run toward Janie. “That girl’s always
got that damned dog underfoot.” There wasn’t spare food to feed him, and we guessed he lived off farm rats. There wasn’t room
in the trailer for him, either. He slept under it most nights. But Janie loved him. Loved that out of everyone else, that
dog said she was best. Never before, with her dead-flower-smelling, trailer-trash ways, had anyone called Janie the Best.

When we found him that day, Janie started sobbing and shaking. My baby mind couldn’t decide what to do, couldn’t understand
what had happened. Until Daddy’s voice called from the bacca.

“Figured you’d prefer dog like them gooks taught you. So I got you a fresh one. Now you and your farm trash can eat him instead.
And you can leave my pimentuh cheese and cherry suckers be.”

Janie walked over to Daddy, standing there in the bacca, and she hit him harder than I ever dreamed a skinny girl could. It
knocked him back, he lost his balance and fell down. I remember thinking,
Do it again!
I remember thinking,
Do it harder!
But she just stood there. Amazed, like me, at how strong she really was. She had knocked our daddy down. The big man of Black
Snake trailer was laying flat in the bacca. With a cut lip, a gash an inch long streaming blood.

Soon, though, I stood there by that dead dog and knew fear I’d never imagined. Because Daddy was on his feet again. Daddy was moving again. And this time, it was Janie that fell to the ground.

They were real fighters, the two of them. They didn’t just share the same blood, they shared rage. The difference was this:
Daddy was used to being strong. He was used to standing over skinny girls with bloody lips. He didn’t hold back, dumbfounded,
amazed by his strength like Janie did. He didn’t give Janie a chance to find her feet. A chance to take another swing.