The woman began to breathe funny, heavy, loud, like she was having a heart attack or asthma attack or a blood clot in the brain. But she worked her fingers into the backs of her shoes and worked them off, and then the socks. She grappled for the side of the tub to stand up but couldn’t seem to do it. She remained seated to pull off the sweatshirt and then the jeans. She sat, knees up against her chest, in her bra and panties. The breathing noises, raspy and loud, ran a blade up Tony’s spine.
“Underwear, too.”
The teacher fumbled with the back of her bra and worked the hooks apart. It fell to the slick tub floor. The woman’s breasts were large, with dark nipples and stretch marks. A mother’s breasts, thought Tony. Deformed from milk and nursing, Tony thought. The teacher slid her panties down, and shook them free of her ankles. Her chest heaved. The eyes had closed.
“Get up.”
The teacher fumbled with the edge of the tub and got her feet under her. She stood, then leaned on the rear wall, eyelashes fluttering.
“Mobile South Motor Inn oughta have lots of nice warm shower water,” said Tony. “Hands up to the curtain rod.”
The teacher shook her head, her eyes still closed.
Tony grabbed one arm and yanked it upward. The teacher’s other arm followed as if with a mind of its own. With one of the towel strips, Tony secured the woman’s wrists together and knotted them to the rod.
“Ever see the movie Scarface?” asked Tony as she stood back to admire her work. “Mam’s boyfriend rented it one time. There was this guy. He was a friend of Al Pacino. He went to a drug deal in some motel room, but the drug deal went bad. This drug dealer with a gun tied Pacino’s friend up in the bathtub with his hands on the curtain rod. You see that?”
The teacher shook her head. Her breath wheezed and whistled.
“You lying again? Everybody seen Scarface.”
“I didn’t see it.” A noisy gasp. “I don’t…care for Al Pacino.”
“Everybody likes Al Pacino! He’s the man. What’s wrong with you? Well, anyway, this guy gets tied up in the bathtub and know what they do? They cut off his arms with a chain saw! Cool, huh? Pacino doesn’t know what’s happening, he’s down on the street waiting. But the motel room gets turned into this fucking butcher shop!”
The teacher’s eyes opened and stayed open. She looked at her bound wrists and began to struggle, began to kick and twist. The rod creaked but didn’t pull loose. It was threaded into the wall and screwed in place. Mobile South Motor Inn had done a nice job choosing and installing the bathroom fixtures. Must have gotten them at Otto’s Hardware. “I don’t have a chain saw,” said Tony. “God, you’re stupid.”
The teacher didn’t stop twisting. She sounded like the goddamned Elephant Man the way she wheezed. I am not an animal, I am a teacher!
Tony turned on the shower and adjusted the nozzle so it struck the teacher in the head. The water was cold. She turned the knob until it was warm. “That’s not bad,” she said, nodding to herself. “That oughta rinse you off. Get rid of some of that stink. I’m going out for something. When I get back, I’ll let you down. Then we’re gonna talk about Baby Doll. About the real reason you had her hiding in the car, why she rubs herself all the time. I bet you know. I know you know. And you ain’t gonna lie no more.” Snatching up the second strip, Tony worked it roughly into the woman’s mouth, forcing it through teeth and over tongue, and tied it at the back. The woman gagged, and the whistling breath came now through her nose, fast, irregular. “What, I’m supposed to believe you’d stand there all quiet?”
Tony took the gun into the bedroom. The kid was on her side now, her arm beneath her head, watching as a cartoon kitchen sponge explained to a starfish why they should have a Fall Fish Festival. Her legs were locked around each other like a braid of red licorice. One shoe had fallen to the carpeted floor.
“Hey,” Tony said to the little girl. “I’m going out. I gotta tie you up.”
The girl didn’t sit up. She just held her hands out in Tony’s direction without taking her eyes from the screen. Disgusted, Tony dumped a pillow from the case and secured the kid’s hands together in front. A second pillow case bound her ankles. “Those pillow cases aren’t too bad, kinda soft, I guess.” Tony watched as the girl lay back down on her side and relaxed into her story.
“I’ll be back. Who said that? What movie?”
The girl looked at Tony and then back at the T.V.
“It was Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
The girl seemed to smile, but Tony knew it was at the sponge cartoon.
36
Water roared in her bad ear. Pounding relentlessly like someone driving a nail into her skull. Her arms, above her head, burned with immobility. Her legs ached. She opened her eyes to light and mist, and closed them again. Her tongue fought the intrusive terry and could not push it out.
Over the sound of the water, a slam. A vibration in the floor of the tub. A door closing, somewhere beyond the water.
Her mind moving as if in cold lake water, grabbing at thoughts but coming up with only slippery, rotting impressions.
Cotton on the ground. Blood on her thighs. The copper-taste of bile. The second grader in the back seat, sneezing beneath a quilt. Hands between her legs, uninvited, probing, taunting. Her fingerprints on a foyer table. The old brick mansion, void of her son, her husband, herself. Chalk dust on her hands. An accident report on her desk.
She bent her head forward, backward, to the side, but the spray of water was wide, and still it struck her ear.
Images, tumbling one atop the other in the darkness behind her eyelids.
A puppy trembling in the back of Bill’s car on the way to Kate’s dorm room.
Donnie at five, sitting with Kate in the living room of their Richmond townhouse, helping her put together a Christmas box for children in Ethiopia. Pencils, toothbrushes, combs, stickers, crayons. Donnie saying, “I bet those kids’ll be really happy when they get this.”
Kate nodding, smiling. “It’s good to help other people.” Donnie asked what the children’s names were. Kate didn’t know.
Donnie firing his rifle at the dead apple tree and the bark opening like a dark, brown flower.
The mouth of a gun screaming silently at her from the other side of the car.
A girl with the red war-stripes, laughing in the passenger’s seat. The girl. The murderer.
Where was the girl? Maybe she’d gone off to steal a car.
Maybe she had gone to steal a chain saw.
Kate spasmed in the warmth of the water. She opened her eyes again and blinked. Steam rose to her nostrils; mist collected on her eyelashes in tiny beads.
The water drops were real. They were now.
The television droned loudly in the bedroom. Scratchy violin music and high-pitched dialogue from actors hired to voice-over cartoons. Did Mistie go out with the girl? No. No. The girl hated Kate. She hated Mistie. Mistie was in there on one of the beds, watching the cartoon.
Go back to sleep, Kate. It’s easier when you’re sleeping. The water will go away if you sleep.
Mistie sneezed. Kate’s head whipped up and back and she looked at the open door leading to the bedroom. She could see just the very corner of the room, the edge of the dresser on which the television sat. Mistie was on the bed in there, watching T.V. as Kate hung like a beef carcass in the tub.
Kate’s drew in the damp, warm air through her nose. Grit and dried sweat ran down her skin to swirl and vanish into the drain. As her breaths eased, her mind cleared. Vague, nebulous thoughts drew together, took shape.
Bitch.
Kate had taken her chance to save Mistie Henderson from her abusive home, and the goddamn little murdering bitch, on a whim, had snatched it away.