Full of Grace (7 page)

A dresser, pressed against the dirty, pink wall, seems to be split right down the center.  Half the dresser top is packed with make-up and bottles of hair stuff, a plastic jewelry box and a basket with some of the face and hair tools that girls always use to torture themselves.  The other half is piled high with a collection of plastic ponies, some sporting braided tails and manes, some shaved clear off.  Some of their faces are scribbled with markers so they look like four-legged Army Seals.  The twin bed, with a grimy, cartoon princess face on one pillow and a clean blue-and-white polka dot design on the other, has obviously been sleeping two.

“You need help?” I ask quietly from the doorway, but Sher still jumps at the sound of my voice.  It’s funny, because when something slams against the living room wall adjacent to the bedroom, Sher doesn’t even flinch.

“I don’t need help.  You can just go.”

“Where are you headed then?”

“To the clinic, first,” she says.  “And then…I don’t know.  Somewhere.”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”

Sher drops some make up and a hair brush into her bag.  “How many times do I have to say it, Landon?  Just leave.  This is not your problem.”

“That’s not what your mom says, and I gotta tell you, I’m kind of afraid of your mom.” I chuckle and Sher drops her arms to her sides, throwing her head back with a tiny laugh that quickly turns to silent sobs that shake her back.  I cross the room and wrap my arms around her, pressing her back to my chest.  She goes rigid and then pulls my arms off her waist, even though she’s sniffling.  With her back still to me, she sorts through the small pile of clothes on the bed, folding and dropping pieces into her bag.

“You can stop trying to be my hero,” she says.  “I don’t need one.”

“But I do,” I tell her, “and this was the address they gave me.”

She glances at me with a sarcastic puff of a laugh.  She finishes with her belongings and zips up the bag.  She turns toward me, her eyes on the door as she swings the strap of the bag onto her shoulder.

“Then you are shit outta luck, buddy.”

I block the door. I don’t like that she’s been living in this slummy apartment complex with her own scary mother.  There’s no way I’m having her out on the street.

“Look, your mom gave you to me,”  I try to joke.  “It doesn’t sound like there’s any trade-backs on the deal, so it looks like you’re coming with me.” 

“No, I’m not,” she growls and when she tries to push by me, I grab her bag and swing her up over my shoulder.  “Oh my God, let me down!  Right now, Landon! Let me down you sonofabitch!”

She beats my back with both fists as I carry her out of the bedroom.  Lisa stands back when she sees me coming, a little bit of shock forming around the lips that clasp her cigarette.

“Don’t let him take me, Mom!  Don’t do this!” Sher howls.

“Shouldn’t have let him knock you up,” Lisa counters.  “There’s nothing I can do about it now, Sher.  I told you how it is and what would happen.  I can’t have any more babies in this apartment, you knew that.”

“MOM!”  Sher shrieks.  Lisa catches my arm.

“Tell me your name, before you take my daughter out of here,” she says.  The wrinkles around her eyes droop.

“Landon Grace, ma’am.”  I can’t hold out a hand to shake hers since I’m juggling Sher and her bag, but Lisa doesn’t look like she wants my handshake anyway.  Instead, her eyes are narrowed again, like a circling buzzard.

“Alright, Landon Grace.  I got your license plate number and your name now.”  She steps so close, I smell the ashes on her.  “And if anything happens to my daughter, Landon Grace, just know that I will get you.  By God, I will.”

Honestly, I’ve never believed anyone more in my life than I believe Lisa Traifere are at this moment, with her Medusa hair, narrowed eyes, and her yellowed fingers, pronging the business end of her smoldering cancer stick in direct line with my left nipple.  This is a woman who has born five wild children and looks like she’d relish the opportunity to remove my nuts with a rusty monkey wrench.

“I believe you two hundred percent,” I tell her.  She steps back then, and holds the door open for me, as I carry her furious daughter away.

***

Of course, the second we’re out of the apartment, Bull-Ring meets us on the stairs going down to the parking lot.  He’s retrieved his gun and has decided to give me another try.

“Stop,” Bull-Ring says, pointing his gun at my eye.  That gets my attention as much as how Sher grabs my waist and tries to pull her head, upside down, under my arm, so she can see Bull-Ring.

“Trent?  God dang it!  Get out of here!”

There’s not much I can do with Sher hollering from under my armpit, and a plastic pellet to the eyeball is going to cause way more problems than what I already have.  But, even though he gets my attention, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to just give him what he wants.  I keep on walking down the stairs toward him and Bull-Ring Trent retreats, stumbling backward.

“I said stop.”  The gun shakes in his hand as he totters off the ground floor step.  It takes him a moment to regain his balance, which isn’t good, since this dope might accidentally fire off a pellet that could do more harm than if he were actually aiming. I step down onto the cement of the parking lot and I humor him. 

I stop.

“Now put her down,” he says.

“Put down the gun and I’ll put her down.” I bargain with him.  Sher stops struggling on my shoulder.

“You’ve got that stupid gun again, Trent?  If you shoot anybody with that thing, so help me…”

“All you have to do, Trent, is put down your gun and I’ll put her down too.  Deal?”  My shoulder is starting to ache anyway, but Trent’s facial fishhooks wiggle as he shakes his head, rejecting the deal.  He doesn’t drop the gun either.

“Nuh uh,” he says.

“Alright.  Then I say
nuh uh
to putting her down too.”

“Look, I’ll shoot you in the leg, asshole.  I mean it.”

Sher goes off like a siren in my ear.  “MOM!  MA!!  TRENT’S GOT HIS GUN OUT AGAIN!”

I’m about to ask Sher what she’s doing, when I suddenly hear Lisa overhead.

“Trent!” Lisa barks. “I told you what would happen if you waved that gun around my daughter again, didn’t I?” I swivel my head to see Lisa hanging over the balcony.  She’s got her own pellet gun.  A better one, in fact, and I hear her cock it.  She repeats in a growl to Trent, “Didn’t I?”

Trent’s gun clangs as it hits the pavement.  Luckily, it doesn’t go off. He springs away, like a terrified gazelle, dodging between parked cars, toward the exit of the complex.

“What’d I tell you about running away, Trent?” Lisa shouts after him, as she levels her gun.  He serpentines. Lisa fires.  The sound is a sharp crack and it only takes half a second for Trent to grab his calf and drop, howling, to the pavement.

I’m not sure what to say to Lisa. 
Thanks?  Good shot?  Holy crap, who gave you all guns?

“Go on now,” Lisa says, waving her gun toward my car.  Then she yells to Trent,  “You ain’t gonna bother them anymore, are you, Trent?”

“Screw you,” he says, pulling himself to his feet.  Lisa aims her gun again, and as he starts limp-hopping across the parking lot, he shouts at her,  “I’m not even near ‘em, Lisa!  Quit shooting me!”

Lisa doesn’t lower her gun, but she doesn’t fire it either.  I get to my car and put Sher on her feet.  I assume she’s not going to run, with her mom armed and watching.  And I’m right.  Sher slides into the passenger seat without a fight.  I close her door and go around to the other side.

“Nice meeting you, Lisa,” I say, giving her a short wave.  Sher’s mom snorts, but I think that’s as close as she gets to friendliness.  She stays at the upstairs rail, Annie Oakley in a worn-out tee shirt, her gun still trained on Trent, as we drive away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“SO WHO’S TRENT AND WHAT’S HIS PROBLEM?” I ask after we’re a few miles down the road.  It hadn’t occurred to me that this girl would come along with a load of baggage, but now I know.  Her baggage is Emo-colored, with a load of metal embedded in his face.

“He’s just an idiot.”

“I got that part.  How do you know him?”

There’s a pause.  “From the apartments.  He lives downstairs, behind the office.  His mom’s the manager.”

“The manager?  Is your mom going to get evicted for shooting his kid?”

“No,” Sher giggles.  It’s nice to hear the sound of it again.  Like ribbons.  “Mrs. Daughtry knows Trent’s an idiot.  She kicks him out all the time.”

“Nice.”

The giggle melts away and she looks out the window.

“Trent’s part of the reason I don’t want to have a kid,” she says.

“What does he have to do with it?”

Another long pause.  “I don’t ever want to have a kid like him.  I don’t ever want to kick my kid out of my house.”

“Why would you expect that?  That’s that guy.  It doesn’t mean it would happen to you.”

“Hello?  Weren’t you the guy that just lumber-jacked me down the stairs?  It
just
happened to me. That was me, being kicked out.”

“Oh, that’s what that was?” I quirk an amused eyebrow at her, since she’s scowling at me.  Sher’s a spitting kitten next to her mother.  “I thought your mom’s was giving me her blessing.”

She giggles softly and something between my shoulder blades relaxes.

“You want to grab something to eat?” I ask.  “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, I kind am too,” she says, and since she’s not talking about having me drop her off at any clinics, I steer us toward one of my favorite restaurants instead.

***

Sher orders steak and almost barfs across the table the second she cuts into it.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.  She sways against the back of the booth cushion, eyes closed. 

“It’s all…pink…inside.”  She takes a fast sip of her ice water.

“You want to swap?”

She doesn’t hesitate.

“Just the fries,”  she says, quickly shoving her plate across the table as if it’s Filet of Dead Mouse.  I dump my burger onto her steak plate and slide her my entire pile of fries.  She still doesn’t look right.

“Are you going to be sick?”

She just shakes her head, although her expression isn’t very reassuring, as she asks me to wait by holding up her index finger.  I move the burger and steak as close to my side as I can.

“Can we just go?” she asks.  I give my burger, only a bite missing, a sad glance.

“Sure.”  I stand up from the booth.

“What are you doing?” she says.  Her lips are still pursed, like she’s holding back a vomit-tsunami, but she motions for me to sit down again.

“I thought you wanted to go?”

“I do,” she says.  “But you’re not just going to leave all that food here, are you?”

“Well, yeah.  If you’re going to be sick…”

She groans, waving over a waitress.  The server comes over immediately, takes one look at Sher, and asks, “Are you okay, honey?”

“We need carryout boxes,” Sher chokes the words and grabs for her water.

“And a to-go cup with more ice water, please,” I add.  The waitress scurries off and returns in seconds.  She even dumps all the food in the boxes for us.  Sher gets up before she does it, but still has to turn her back on the carnage of the dirty plates.  She sips her water, staring at the floor.  I leave cash with the waitress and carry the Styrofoam boxes as I follow Sher outside.

She stops beside my car and takes a deep breath.  Her color returns a little.

“I’m starving,” she says.

“Seriously?  You want to go back in?”

“Not unless you really want me to puke,” she says.

“Back to my place, then.”

We drive to my house with both windows down and Sher leaning out of hers like a sad, golden retriever.  She eats some of the fries while hanging over the moving pavement and every time she ducks her head back inside for too long, the smell of the meat gets her again and she gags.  I wonder if this will be the way it goes.  I wonder if she will consider sticking with it.

Back at my place, Sher hasn’t mentioned the clinic once, until we get in the door.  She sighs, dropping her gym bag on the floor, beside my couch.

“I can sleep here tonight,” she says, slapping the cushion.  “But tomorrow, Landon, please…I’ve got to make an appointment and I’ve got to get to the clinic.”

I can’t help but sigh.  I put the boxes in the fridge.  I’m not even hungry anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she says when I walk back into the living room.  But it’s not like I can just say it’s okay and move on.  My kid is in her stomach and, while I get that it’s her body and that she’s the one making the biggest sacrifice here, it still isn’t fair that I don’t have any say about it.  I’d be willing to do almost anything she wants.

But as I stare at the dark rings around her eyes, I know that the only thing I can do now is fight her—with exhaustion, with food, and with hijacking all her shit so it makes it harder for her to leave.  I’ll do anything, besides driving her to the clinic.

“I wish I’d gotten to know you better, before all this happened,” she says, collapsing on one end of the couch.  A whiff of an unconquered battleground rises out of her tone of regret.  I jump on it.

“Would that have changed things?”

“Probably.”  Her smile is weak.  I take advantage of that too, dropping onto the opposite end of the couch.

“What did you want to know?” I ask.  Her weak smile surfaces again.

“Oh no, I’m not falling for this again.  You did this to me last night.”

“Did what?” I ask, trying my best to look shocked.  “We just let each other know where we stood last night.  We didn’t really get to talk.”

“I’m tired.”  Elbows on her knees, she slumps into her own hands, her face hidden and her ponytail dangling toward the floor.  I get this crazy urge to reach out and touch it.  Seeing her hair fall over her fingers triggers some muscle memory in me, how her hair spilled over my hands the night we created the reason that we’re here now.  I remember how the locks of her hair felt cool across my fingers and my fingertips itch for it again, but I keep them in my lap.  I can see how grabbing her ponytail might send her screaming from my apartment.