“Shit,” said Rebecca. She pointed at Mrs. Polk’s right arm, a quickly spreading darkness seeping through her quilted housecoat.
“You shot me?” Mrs. Polk asked, her voice suddenly childlike with disbelief.
“Shit,” Rebecca said again.
Mrs. Polk started to scream again, struggling against her restraints. “I’m bleeding!” she cried. “Call a doctor!” She became hysterical, as anyone would.
“Hush,” said Rebecca, going to Mrs. Polk’s side. “The neighbors will hear you. Don’t make it any worse. Quit fussing,” she said, covering the woman’s mouth with her hand. I had warned Rebecca about the gun. Mrs. Polk would be fine, I assured myself. A superficial flesh wound was all I thought she’d suffered. Her arm was wide and fatty. No great harm had occurred, I thought. But the woman could not be soothed. She panted like a crazed animal and shook her head violently against Rebecca’s hold, trying to scream for help. I picked up the gun, and feeling the strange heat through the grip, I was struck with an idea.
You can think what you want, that I was vicious and conniving, that I was selfish, delusional, so twisted and paranoid that only death and destruction would satisfy me, make me happy. You can say I had a criminal mind, I was pleased only by the suffering of others, what have you. In a moment’s time I figured out how to solve everyone’s problems — mine, Rebecca’s, Mrs. Polk’s, my father’s. I came up with a plan to take Mrs. Polk to my house, shoot her, wait until she died, leave the gun in my father’s hands — he would be passed out drunk — then drive off into the sunrise. Yes, of course I wanted to run off, and all the more if Rebecca would come with me. And yes, I thought killing Mrs. Polk was the only way to save Rebecca and me from the consequences of Rebecca’s scheme. If Mrs. Polk were dead, no one would know that Rebecca and I had been involved, I figured. We’d be free.
But I was also thinking of my father. Nothing I could do would ever inspire him to dry out for good, get straight, be the father I wanted. He couldn’t even see how sick he was. Only a massive shock would wake him up. If he believed he’d killed an innocent woman, that might be enough to shake him. Then he might see the light, accept the truth of his condition. He might have a change of heart. If they asked my father why he shot Mrs. Polk, maybe he’d mutter something about me and Lee, suggesting he thought that Lee was my boyfriend. The police would see he’d really lost his mind. They’d put him in prison maybe, but more likely they’d take him to a hospital, treat him well, nurse him back to health. I’d be long gone, of course, but at least he’d have the presence of mind to miss me, to regret what he’d put me through, to wish he could somehow make amends.
And as for me, I’d put off my escape from X-ville for long enough, my desire to leave always outweighed by my laziness and fear. If I killed Mrs. Polk, I’d be forced out of X-ville once and for all. I’d have to change my name. I’d have to completely disappear. Only fear of imprisonment, restitution, could propel me to leave. I could stay in X-ville and face hell, or I could disappear. I gave myself no choice. Shooting Mrs. Polk was the only option.
But how would we get Mrs. Polk to my house without her screaming the whole ride long? I wondered, turning the gun over in my hands. She bucked and stomped, wailing and gnashing her teeth as Rebecca shushed her and tried to stifle the screams by pressing her hands over the woman’s mouth, but it was like stopping a break in a dam — Mrs. Polk refused to quiet down. Her arm was bleeding, but not profusely. Rebecca looked at me in desperation.
“What do we do?”
I shuffled around in my purse for my mother’s pills. “I have these,” I said, shaking the bottle. “They’re for pain.”
“Tranquilizers?” Rebecca’s face brightened. She grabbed them from my hand. “What else do you have in your purse, Eileen?” she asked. I didn’t catch her sarcasm at first.
“Lipstick,” I answered.
I watched as Rebecca approached Mrs. Polk again, this time cautiously, coolly, as she would a frightened animal. The woman twisted her neck and bucked her head as Rebecca reached out to grab her face, one fist under her jaw, holding the pills in her other hand. She wrestled with the woman’s head like a farmer with a cow, pinched her nose closed. Seeing her move like that made me wonder still, where had Rebecca come from? Perhaps she was a country girl, a farmer’s daughter, a rancher. Truthfully, I cared less and less to make sense of her. I watched as Mrs. Polk clenched her jaw, held her breath, stared up fiercely into Rebecca’s eyes. Finally her lips parted, and Rebecca opened her fist and took the pills in her other hand and worked them into Mrs. Polk’s mouth. I was crouched down at a distance, observing them. I had a strangely comic impulse to pray or sing. I thought of the rites of passage I’d read about in National Geographic, bizarre ceremonies where people are bound and gagged, left in the desert, trapped in cages for days without food or water, administered hallucinogenic drugs so powerful that they forget their childhoods, their names. They return to their villages entirely new people, imbued with the spirit of God, fearless of death, and respected by everyone. Perhaps this experience in the basement, I thought, was akin to that. After it was over I’d be living on a higher plane. No one could ever hurt me, I imagined. I’d be immune.
“You’ll be sorry!” Mrs. Polk cried once the pills went down. “I know you now. I’ll tell everyone what you’ve done.”
“Nobody will believe you,” said Rebecca, her tone not as assured or confident as it should have been.
“Like hell,” said Mrs. Polk, eyeing me. There was no great heartfelt surrender in the basement that night, just the three of us, our faces shiny with sweat or tears in the quaking light. Rebecca and I sat back and waited. The stain of blood on Mrs. Polk’s arm seemed to stop spreading. Her breathing began to slow. “Get out, go away,” she whined. “Get the hell out of here.” Her voice dragged out like a slowing record bit by bit as the pills took effect. Once she was asleep, slumped against the wall, mouth leaking, tears drying into a crust around her eyes, Rebecca and I began to whisper. It took less than ten minutes, I’d say, to convince her that my plan was a good one. “My father’s a drunk,” I said. “If he killed somebody, it’d be on the cops — they should have locked him up years ago. Maybe they’ll find Mrs. Polk and sweep the whole thing under the rug. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be fine.” Rebecca’s face had flattened and stiffened, her knuckles white as she clutched the dirty hem of her robe. “We’ll have to hide out somewhere,” I added, trying to maintain my composure. “I was thinking New York City.”
“How do we get her to your father’s house?” is all Rebecca asked me.
“We’ll have to carry her out to the car.” It seemed easy.
“And you’ll shoot her?”
“My father will,” I said. “But we’ll pull the trigger.”
“We?” Rebecca’s eyebrows lifted. She pushed her hair out of her face.
“I will,” I assented. It didn’t seem so terrible. The woman had nothing to live for anyway. Either she could die quickly and painlessly or stay and rot in that awful house of hers, her dark past weighing on her day after day. “It won’t hurt,” I said. “Look.” I kicked at the woman’s fat feet. “She’s out cold.”
After a few moments of biting her lip and wringing her hands, Rebecca agreed. Together we untied Mrs. Polk’s hands and lifted her off the floor. Remarkable how much a human being can weigh, I remember thinking. I took her from under her shoulders and Rebecca held her feet, and we hoisted her bit by bit up the steps, me going backward and bearing most of the load. It took every reserve of energy I had, and by the time we’d reached the top of the stairs, my knees shook and my arms burned. “Let’s take a break,” I said. But Rebecca insisted we move quickly.