Lyndee awakes disoriented. She sits up, struggling against the ropes I’ve tied around her ankles and wrists. Slowly she takes in her surroundings. Her hair is sticking straight up on one side. I wait, perched on the stool, my hands folded in my lap. I imagine I look like a schoolgirl gone wrong, straight-backed and intense, a can of gasoline between my boots. When she sees me, she doesn’t look surprised. Not even a little. It feels right, like this is all supposed to be—her and me here, in a shed with a can of gasoline.
“I’m Sean,” I say cheerfully. She flinches.
I open her backpack, the zipper loud even among the singing of the night creatures. From it I pull Bambi, Nevaeh’s pink bear. I hold it up to Lyndee. “I was on the bus with Nevaeh the day she went missing. This was in her backpack.” Lyndee’s eyes travel from the bear back to my face. Her expression reveals nothing, though her hands appear to clutch the blanket a little tighter.
“She disappeared with her backpack. Except she didn’t really disappear, did she? She was with you.”
Lyndee at first shakes her head, her eyes zoned in on the bear. But, when I say, “You killed Nevaeh.” She becomes defensive, her face contorting as she tries to form an argument. She sees the gas can, and something changes in her movements.
“It was an axe-dent,” she says, scrambling backward until her shoulders hit the wall. One of her breasts has slipped from her shirt; it hangs limply over the floral material. I sold her that shirt at the Rag, I think. When Nevaeh was still alive. She came with her mother, and hung out with me at the register, counting the pennies in the “extra jar” while Lyndee shopped. I can see the beads of sweat on Lyndee’s brow, brewing slowly then slipping down the side of her face. She reeks of sweat and fear, but not regret. If I smelled a hint of it on her, I might think twice about what I’m about to do. But Lyndee is a narcissist. She’s convinced herself that killing and burning her daughter’s body was an accident.
“You could have sent her to live with her grandmother.”
“I know, I know. Don’t do this, please. Let me go. I’ll turn myself in to the police. Is that what you want? I ain’t got no problem with you.” She’s holding up her hands as if she can ward me off with her dirt-stained palms. Her nail polish is blue, painted perfectly like she took the time to get it right. This makes me angrier, that she could be so meticulous with her nail polish, caring that there is no overlap onto her fingers, that there are enough coats to make it smooth and thick. All for Sean. Caring about fingernails while she cared so little for her girl.
I ease up, relax my shoulders, and readjust my face to pretend I’m thinking about it.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
She’s cowering on the floor. I can see the whites of her eyes as she claws at the dirt.
“My boyfriend,” she says. “He didn’t want no kids. He wanted to move to Portland, he’s got family there and a better job waiting. I told him Nevaeh was a good girl, but she didn’t like him. Always used to make trouble for me by saying stuff to him. When I told her we was leaving, she said she wasn’t going, she wasn’t moving away from her granny. Her daddy wasn’t paying me nothing either,” she finishes, as if this justifies everything.
“How did she die?” My voice is neutral, my face impassive. I am afraid that if I show emotion, she won’t tell me what happened, but I need to know what they did to Nevaeh.
I expect her to answer me, but she turns her face away.
“It was him, wasn’t it?”
She nods, her jaw clenched. “We went to pick her up, caught her on her granny’s street. She wouldn’t get in the car…”
I think of Nevaeh. I’d never seen her be defiant, never seen her disrespectful.
“Steve got out to grab her,” Lyndee says. “He was … rough. She screamed real loud and tried to run. We had to drive off real fast.”
I have to close my eyes, the scene playing out graphically in my mind. A little girl’s terror, her need to run to her grandmother who gave her a sense of love and permanence. Her mother’s boyfriend, always resentful, always watching, wishing she weren’t there. Nevaeh knowing and living with the fact that her mother chose someone else over her daily. Sent her away as often as possible to salvage her relationship with a man who couldn’t tolerate her child.
“What then?” I say, impatient for the story to be over. I want to know how she died, so I can bring Lyndee Anthony to justice.
“He gave her some juice, to calm her down. Didn’t tell me there was sleeping pills in there until after. He was just gonna make her sleep ‘til we got to Portland. We went back to the house to get some things before Tom got home from work. Tom owns the house, he’s Steve’s friend. We wanted to be out before the morning so we didn’t have to pay rent. We owed a couple months, you know. We packed up the car with our shit. Before we left I looked back at her. She looked funny. When I reached back and felt her neck, she was cold. And she wasn’t breathing.” She lets out a pitiful sob. “I ain’t meant for her to die!” Her story is wobbling from “he” to “I,” and I wonder how much of her account is truth. How much of it was her plan, and how much of it was Steve’s?
“Why didn’t you take her to the hospital? There could have been time to save her. She could have been in a coma!”
Lyndee’s eyes shift from side to side, trying to find an adequate excuse, or perhaps a way out of the shed. She is trying, I realize, to answer me in the way she thinks I want.
“It was too late,” she says. “There was no heartbeat.” I know that’s not true by the look on her face. Nevaeh’s heartbeat may have been barely discernible, but there was still time to get her to a hospital.
“So you drove her to the woods and burned her?”
My heart rate is rising as I realize Nevaeh could have been alive when they burned her. Trapped inside her own mind, in a coma. Lyndee and her idiot boyfriend too high and stupid to know that a person’s heart rate can drop so low that even a stethoscope can struggle to pick it up.
“Steve said the mistake was already made. We could make it look like someone took her. I didn’t want to go to prison because of an accident!” She’s so insistent. So desperate for me to see her broken reasoning.
“An accident?” I ask. “What about the rest of the days? Not just the day you killed her. All the days you chose your piece of shit boyfriend over her, the nights she put herself to bed because you were too drunk to stand up, the nights she made herself dinner, the days she had to take care of YOU. You were her mother!”
Lyndee is temporarily stunned, her lips moving without sound.
“You knew her,” she finally says. “Did she tell you that?”
She did. Stories on the bus. Little things Nevaeh would say. Never accusatory in regards to her mother, just simple facts that slipped in during our conversations.
“Bambi was scared last night. She cried ‘til she fell asleep.”
“Why was she scared?”
“We were home alone.”
“Where was your mom?”
“Somewhere with Steve…”
“I ate brownies for dinner, and I felt so funny after.”
“You did? Was it someone’s birthday?”
“Naw. It was dinnertime. Mama was asleep, so I ate the brownies I found. But after that I felt dizzy and weird…”
“It was my birthday this weekend.”
‘What did you do? Did you go somewhere special?”
“No. Mama had to go somewhere important with Steve. She said we would go to a movie next week.”
“So you didn’t do anything for your birthday?”
“They sang to me at school, and Granny brought me over a cupcake.”
I try to find my humanity. There is forgiveness, even in the hardest human heart. I could hand her over to the police, but there’s no evidence. If they pushed her, perhaps she’d confess like she did with me, but if she didn’t, then what? Without proof, they’d have to let her go. Judah is right. There is no justice for the poor.
; “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do that. From one murderess to another, you should understand.”
She whimpers. She was a little girl once. Just like Nevaeh, with pigtails and innocence and hopes for a life of love. Maybe if I picture her like that, I can forgive her. I try, but all I see is a murdering whore. She was born to be a murderess, just like me. Plus, I like the way this feels. Cleaning up. The satisfaction is deep. A warm shower when you’re cold. I pick up Bambi from where Lyndee dropped her, and tuck her under my arm.
Murderess!
Murderess!
I empty the gas can around her; it splashes on her arms and legs, the smell of petroleum burning my nose and making me light-headed. She yells and begs, brilliant, thick tears streaming down her face. All I can think is how she never cried for Nevaeh, not once, but here she is crying for herself. She stands up and rushes me, but the chain around her ankle yanks her back. She falls, but for a moment she is suspended in the air. I slip the book of matches from my back pocket. Heat flares across the shed. Lyndee screams. I close the door behind me. I burn her. One match from a book that I bought from the Quickie Corner—the ones with the teddy bear on them—and a locked room soaked in gasoline. An eye for an eye. A burn for a burn. Vengeance for Nevaeh.
I am a monster. I am just like her. One day I’ll burn, but not now. Now I’ll burn her. I am not five steps out when I see the crow. A dark blur on a branch. It caws at me. I lift a hand, wave to the bird, then carry on.
The smoke curls into the sky behind me as I pick my way back through the woods. I take my time, touching the leaves and listening to frogs and crickets. I am relaxed, lulled by her screams.
“Do you hear that, Nevaeh?” I say to the woods. “Vengeance is mine.”
I WAKE UP IN A COLD SWEAT. I am shaking so hard I bite down on my tongue and taste blood. There was a dream, horrific and violent, in which I burned Nevaeh’s mother alive. I swallow the blood in my mouth and stare down at my hands. My fingernails are dirty—ripped, jagged, and caked in dark dirt. I run to the bathroom. I don’t care if my mother has a man in her bedroom. I don’t care that I’m not supposed to be out here before seven so that he can leave in peace. I need to see myself. My face is dirty, my eyes big, panicked. There is blood on my chin and long scratches on my cheeks. I fill the sink with hot water, and grab the old rag from its hooks. Dipping it in the water, I scrub my face, then my fingernails.
“Oh my God. Oh my God…” I say it over and over to fill the silence of the eating house. Her body burning. Her screams. They were all real. I did that. Again. And it wasn’t an accident. Not the first time, not last night. I killed. I bend over, breathing hard, and then not breathing at all. I don’t know whether to breathe or not breathe. I don’t know whether to stand, or sit, or cry, or run. It wasn’t like this the first time. I killed Vola on instinct when I caught her in the act of beating her child. I planned Lyndee’s murder, agonized over the details, but I never saw her hurt Nevaeh. I could turn myself into the police. It’s then that I remember my mother is dead. It all comes back in a flash of memory: blood, the body bags, the tiny body in the corner of the bedroom. I straighten up, blinking at myself in the mirror.
Someone is pounding on the door. I stumble downstairs, blinking at the light streaming in through the windows. My mother kept the upstairs dark in hopes that her customers wouldn’t notice the fine lines starting to etch their way across her face. Sometimes, when you were up there, you forgot if it was day or night. I make a mental note to pull down the newspaper she used to block out the light.
I look through the peephole and see Mo on the porch, irritated. My blood runs cold. I take a step back, wring my hands, lick away the beads of sweat on my upper lip. He couldn’t possibly know. Unless someone saw me…
Why is it so goddamn hot in here? Hiding is bad. Hiding makes you look guilty. I lunge for the deadbolt and turn it before I have the chance to overthink things.
“What the fuck took you so long?”
“I was fucking sleeping.”
Mo is looking at his phone, his fingers moving across the screen in hyper speed.
“That’s bullshit,” he says. Except he pronounces it bool-sheeit.
“What do you want?” I fold my arms across my chest, to hide the fact that I’m not wearing a bra, and lean against the doorframe.
“I need you to watch my kid,” he says. “Vola’s ma don’t want him, and I got shit to do.”
My heart jumps at the prospect of seeing Little Mo. I’d been too afraid to go over there since … I did that thing. Afraid someone would see her death on my face.
“Yeah, whatever,” I say. “But I’m not your babysitter.”
He looks up from his phone. “Chill out, giiirl. I ain’t asked you to be no babysitter. Just watch him for me as a favor. I’ll hook you up.”
I shrug. Lubdublubdublubdub.
He starts to walk away, then suddenly turns to look at me. “Sorry about your moms. We both lost someone. ‘S fucked up.” It looks like he might want to give me a hug, so I back up a few steps.
Out of habit, I glance at the stairs, expecting to see the bottom of her red robe. The eating house is mine now. If I want to use the bathroom before seven, I can. If I want to stomp around and yell at the top of my lungs, I can.
“I’ll be okay,” I say. “…will you guys?”
Mo shrugs. “Don’t have no choice but to be.”
I wonder what Mo would do to me if he knew about Vola. Maybe, in some ways, Mo is relieved she is gone. Like I am about my mom. But he’d probably lodge a bullet in my skull and call it a day. That is the way of things here: revenge over reason.
He comes back with the baby ten minutes later. There is no diaper bag, no food, no bottles, no instructions. Just Little Mo in his too-big-for-him stroller, his velvety brown eyes blinking slowly like the world has no appeal.
“Let’s go shopping,” I tell him, watching through the window as his father slams the door to the crack house. I mess with the wheel of the stroller for twenty minutes while Mo lies on a blanket on the floor next to me. In the end it’s too hard to fix, so I sling my Groceries & Shit bag over my shoulder and carry him. He’s so still in my arms that every few minutes I peer down to see if he’s fallen asleep. I hear Judah calling my name. When I turn around, he’s wheeling himself down the sidewalk quicker than I’ve ever seen him move. He went back to his old chair, said the other one made him feel lazy.
He slows down when he’s next to us, and keeps pace.
“Where were you last night?”
I stop. “What?”
“Last night,” he says again. “I saw you walking home. You looked … strange.”
“Work,” I say, starting to walk again.
“Something keep you late?” he asks. His hands are moving quickly across the wheels of his chair to keep up.
“Huh?”
“It was midnight when I saw you.”
“Oh … yeah. I was late.” I look out at the field across the street. The leaves on the trees are turning.
He’s quiet for a minute, then he says, “They found a body near the harbor this morning.”
“Whose?” I ask. My mouth feels dry. I try to keep my eyes on the road ahead of me, but everything is blurring in and out of focus.
“They don’t know yet. It’s on the news. Someone reported a fire in the woods near the harbor, so the police went out there to check it out, and there was a body.”
“Hmm,” I say. “Whose was it?”
“You just asked me that,” he says. “I told you they don’t know.”
‘Oh,” I say dumbly. I switch Mo to my other hip.
“Let me have him,” Judah says, holding out his arms.
“He doesn’t know you,” I say, squeezing Mo a little tighter.
“And you two are on a first name basis?” He wiggles his fingers impatiently. I reluctantly relinquish the baby to Judah’s arms. My arms are starting to get tired, and I’m not even to the end of Wessex yet.
&n
bsp; “You can push me, and I can hold him. Doesn’t he have a stroller?”
“It’s broken,” I say. “The wheel…”
“Bring it over later, I’ll take a look.”
“Ugh, you’re so helpful it’s annoying,” I say.
Judah turns the baby around so they’re facing each other. I notice that Little Mo pulls his legs up instead of stiffening them when held under his arms.
“You don’t look like a Mo,’” he informs the baby. For the next forty minutes I listen to Judah discuss various name choices with the baby, who looks right through him. By the time we reach Wal-Mart, my arms are aching, and the baby is fussy. Judah has somehow renamed him Miles. “Mo Miles, Mo Miles,” he says, and I swear Mo gives him a little smile like he’s approving. Mo’s smiles are rare. I feel jealous.
“I think he needs formula,” I say. We make our way to the baby aisle. I grab diapers, formula, and a pack of bottles. When I turn around, Judah has a colorful toy in his hand; he’s moving it left to right, letting Mo follow it with his eyes. There is a brief moment where Mo lifts his fist as if to touch the toy, and my heart does a little jump.
“We’re getting that too,” I say.
“Your mom leave you some money?” he asks me when I pull a hundred dollar bill from my pocket.
“You could say that.”
“Here,” he says, holding out his hand for my Groceries & Shit bag. “He needs a bottle.”
I hold Mo while Judah makes him a bottle. Two scoops of formula, a bottle of Aquafina, then he shakes it and holds out his arms. I place Mo is his lap, and Judah sticks the bottle in his mouth. As I watch Mo eat, I wonder how Judah knew how to do that. I would have struggled to read the instructions for fifteen minutes, and probably would have dropped the whole container of powder on the ground. While I watch them, I hear Lyndee’s screams. I smell the smoke. I feel her blood. I killed a woman. I planned it all out, and I killed a woman, and here I am at Wal-Mart the next day with my hot cripple friend and the neighbor’s baby. I don’t know which person is the imposter. I am either Margo of the Bone, or this new thing, this murderer. Or maybe I’ve always been her, this vile, wicked person; she was just there, simmering beneath the surface, waiting for me to act on my impulses.