“Mom’s wrong about you,” she whispered.
Dad blinked, and smiled down into the dregs of his beer. He gave Shelly a squeeze around the shoulders.
“You better go to bed, little girl,” said Dad. “It’s late.”
The bathroom door opened upstairs, and Mom made her way noisily to her own bedroom. A minute later, the mist of her shower wafted down — carrying with it the combined scent of perfumed soaps, old angry sweat, and tar-fume.
It was, Shelly realized, the first time she’d smelled tar since Dad had shut the basement door and Mom had gotten in the shower. For whatever reason, the tar baby’s smell had just stayed put. Shelly laughed to herself: Mom had been wrong on that score too.
Dad stood up, and patted Shelly on the back. “Come on, little girl,” he said. “Daddy’s going out for a walk — you get on up to bed.” Blaine was already in the top bunk when she came into the bedroom. He had his reading light on, and was propped up on an elbow over some kind of magazine — Shelly couldn’t see what because of the angle, but she suspected it was one of his mountain biking magazines.
“I’m not turning out the light,” said Blaine.
“Who said I want you to?”
“You always want to go to sleep early.”
“I’m not the one in bed already.”
Blaine glared at her, picked up his magazine, and rolled over so he was facing the wall. Paper rustled angrily as he positioned the magazine out of his own shadow.
“You’re lucky,” he muttered.
Shelly supposed he was right. Normally, after a little exchange like that one, Blaine would swing down from the bunk, grab Shelly in a headlock and take the last word in the argument by sheer might. Shelly would have to apologize — no, she would have to beg, and if she were lucky, that would be all it took.
Tonight, Shelly guessed she was really lucky.
She sat down on the bottom bunk and pulled off her T-shirt. The springs over her head creaked as Blaine shifted his weight.
“Lucky,” he said again, his voice low and kind of scary. “I could come down and pound you right now. You know I’d do it.”
Shelly unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them off and slid under the covers.
“You know that — don’t you, shitty Shelly?”
“Stop it, Blaine.”
“Shitty Shelly,” said Blaine, and he started to sing it: “Shitty Shelly shitty Shelly.”
“Stop it,” she repeated, but of course he wouldn’t.
“Shitty Shelly shitty Shelly. What are you gonna do, shitty Shelly? Get mad like Mom did?”
“This is stupid,” she said. “This is what Dad was talking about.”
She rolled back on her haunches, and lifted her feet to the mattress of the top bunk. Part of her screamed a warning: Suicide! Don’t even try it! But the taunt was getting under her skin — Blaine knew how to get under her skin better than almost anyone — and she couldn’t help herself. She bucked back on her shoulders, and pushed hard against the mattress with her feet — not too hard, just enough to send him a message.
She felt Blaine’s weight roll to one side, and heard a crack! sound like snapping wood, and she felt the bed-frame tremble even as Blaine shouted. If she’d been even a little angry a second ago, it was all gone now; Shelly was just scared.
“You dumb bitch!” Blaine sounded an inch from tears. “You dumb goddamn bitch! That was my head!”
Before she could even answer, Blaine was half-way down the ladder from the top bunk. His head. She guessed she’d rolled him against one of the bed-posts, given him a good bang on the skull. Blaine was going to pound her all right. Shelly screwed her eyes shut and curled herself into a ball — waiting for the rain of fists that would follow, and hoping they’d just fall on her back and shoulders. She knew from bitter experience that if she let Blaine get to her stomach and face, there’d be no end to the pain…
But the punching didn’t come.
Blaine made a strangling sound, and she heard the sound of his bare feet moving across the floor — and then she heard the door open and close.
“You’re dead!” He yelled it from the hall, like he was chasing her, then repeated it from the bottom of the stairs:
“You’re dead!”
Cautiously, Shelly opened her eyes.
“B-Blaine?” she whispered.
But of course he didn’t answer: she was alone in the bedroom. Distantly, she heard the sound of a door downstairs opening and closing again. Shelly wasn’t sure, but it might have been the basement door in the kitchen. She curled more tightly around herself, and shut her eyes again.
Shelly didn’t sleep. Part of it was the Coke she’d had with Dad, but mostly she stayed awake thinking about the tar baby, and what it’d done to Mom. This, she guessed, was how it was when Mr. Baldwin got in trouble with the other men in prison back in the early days. She tried to imagine how it would have been — Mr. Baldwin’s first night with the tar baby. Maybe the guy who had the top bunk there was looking for some trouble like Blaine had been, holding it and stoking it and building his meanness through the evening until it was something he could use, in the small hours of the night.
Behind her closed eyes, she could almost see the two of them, skinny little Mr. Baldwin lying still like a rabbit underneath his blanket, and the other prisoner — probably he was a lot bigger, and had been in a lot of fights, just like Blaine — him jumping down like he wants a piece, saying “Shitty Baldwin, shitty Baldwin, shitty Baldwin” over and over again. And because Mr. Baldwin wouldn’t answer him, and wouldn’t do what he said, and maybe earlier that day lipped off to him like Shelly had lipped off to Blaine, that other prisoner reached down to grab onto his shoulder, and give him a beating.
Only it wasn’t Mr. Baldwin’s shoulder he grabbed. He reached down to the bucket by his bunk, and that prisoner had his hand stuck deep in the tar baby’s shoulder. Before he could think, he hit that tar baby again, and one more time, and that was it — he was stuck. Just like Bre’r Rabbit in the movie. Just like Mom tonight.
Shelly wondered if Mr. Baldwin laughed that first time, the way Dad had laughed when Mom had gotten herself tangled up in their tar baby.
Or, she thought with a shiver, maybe Mr. Baldwin just lay in his bunk, all curled up trying to go to sleep, while his cell mate choked on tar on the floor beside him.
Blaine had been downstairs a long time. And Dad was still out walking, and Mom hadn’t budged from her bedroom.
And hadn’t Dad said something about teamwork?
Shelly got out of bed and pulled on her T-shirt. “Mom!” she shouted, pushing her feet through the legs of her jeans. “Hey, Mom!”
She walked barefoot across the floor of the bedroom and opened the door to the hallway. She took a breath to yell—
— and coughed.
The air in the hallway was sticky with the stink of tar, and she had a lungful of it. Shelly reeled back, covering her face with her hand, but of course her fingers were no filter and the damage had already been done. She coughed again, and gasped, and managed, finally, to yell — “Mom!”
Shelly stumbled forward, holding onto the banister around the stairwell as she did. The air seemed to get worse the further she went, and by the time she pushed Mom’s bedroom door open, she was barely taking half-breaths. The door swung open, and Shelly ran past the bed — not even looking to see if Mom was there — and fell against the windowsill. Her lungs had hitched a final time, and now she couldn’t breathe at all. With the last of her strength, she grabbed onto the base of the window and hefted it up.