"Well, I need Keith and I don't care what anybody says!"
"Well, you'd better think long and hard about ruining your life before it can even begin!"
"Is that what you did when you married Daddy?"
The conversation was disintegrating. We were almost to Vernell and Jolene's driveway and the more I spoke, the further down my throat my foot went. I stopped the car in the driveway next to Jolene's huge white Cadillac and turned to face Sheila.
"Yes and no," I said. Sheila's eyes widened and she looked as if she was about to cry.
"I loved your daddy, Sheila, or at least I thought I did, but I married him for all the wrong reasons."
Sheila gasped. "You were pregnant with me!"
"No, hon, honest to Pete, that happened on our honeymoon. No, I married your daddy because your grandpa was drunk most of the time and I wanted to get away." An understanding reached Sheila's eyes. Lately Vernell was the same way, drunk more than he was sober.
"But I didn't give myself credit, Sheila. I didn't know that I could survive on my own. I didn't think I had any options and I thought I was in love. It was stupid, honey. We didn't know ourselves or each other well enough to commit for the rest of our lives."
"But you loved each other," Sheila said.
"Sure, but love don't always make a marriage, honey. You got to be ready for marriage. You got to know yourself as well as your partner. All's I'm saying is take your time. Don't jump into something out of desperation."
Sheila heard me, but the wall was coming back up. "Well, I do know myself. I am mature for my age and I love Keith."
"Good, then," I said. "If you two have a strong love, then it will last no matter what. It'll last until you go to college and then some. After all, a lifelong love doesn't go away just because someone gets an education."
Sheila rolled her eyes.
"Do you want me to take you to the doctor?" I said finally.
"God, no, Mama!" I breathed a sigh of relief, but too quickly. "Jolene'll take me to her doctor. It's less embarrassing!"
As if on cue, Jolene stuck her head out the front door. "Phone," she yelled out to Sheila.
"I gotta go, Mama," Sheila said, already halfway out the door.
"Sheila, wait, I'm not finished with this conversation."
"I know, I know," she said impatiently, "but really, Mama, I gotta go. I won't rush into anything," she said, a concession to my worry. "But you gotta understand something, Mama. You and Daddy won't always be around. I can depend on Keith. He'll take care of me."
She was gone then, running up the cobblestone drive and into Vernell's brick palace. What had happened to my baby? Only two years ago, we'd talked about everything under the sun. She hadn't let the thought enter her head that I could ever leave her. What had happened to change her? Where had my little girl gone?
Jolene stretched out her arm and handed Sheila the phone. Sheila took it and ran inside without a backward glance, but Jolene made a point of smirking triumphantly at me. She could make my daughter come running anytime she wanted to. Sheila lived with her now and I was out in the cold.
Maybe it had been a mistake to let Sheila go live with her father. But what choice had I had?
Sheila had made up her mind; there was nothing I could've done. I drove off feeling empty and afraid for my baby and like the worst mother in the world. Where was the control in my life? Why did I feel like I was on a runaway train without brakes?
I drove, my car wandering across town on autopilot. The late afternoon traffic was beginning to build, but I hardly noticed. I was in a funk that had no end, a deep bottomless pit of self-pity that seemed to swallow me whole. The only thing that brought me back into the present was the awareness that I had just pulled into my backyard, the very last place on earth I'd wanted to visit.
I sat there behind the wheel, staring at the back door that led into my bedroom. Who the hell cared, I thought. What was the big, superstitious deal about not going into my own home? So Jimmy had died on my living room rug. I couldn't just run away forever. After all, wasn't that what I always did, run away? If I'd gone to court and tried to fight to keep Sheila, maybe the judge would've forced her to stay.
"Maggie, you are being ridiculous!" I said into the cool, late afternoon air. "Sheila is doing what all teenaged girls do to their mothers, she's trying to make her life your fault. Now, get a grip and get on with it!"
I grabbed the keys from the ignition, hopped out of the car, and slammed the door behind me. Now was as good a time as any to face the demon of Jimmy's deaths The band wasn't playing tonight. There wasn't even a rehearsal scheduled. What better time?
"You are a chicken girl, afraid of her own shadow. If you continue to act like the world is biting you in the ass, you'll always be at the mercy of everybody else." I was talking aloud to the neighborhood, climbing the steps to my back door, and sticking my key in the lock before I could change my mind. "We're going to go inside and clean this mess up. Then we're going to settle back in." I don't know who I thought the "we" was, but it felt good to pretend I was part of it.
I stepped inside, turned on the lights, and made myself walk straight through to the front of the house. I turned on the living room light and stared down at the floor, willing myself to look at Jimmy's bloodstain on my grandma's rug. It was still there. I don't know why that fact surprised me a little. I guessed it was my denial, still trying to trick me into the belief that this had all been a nightmare.
I pushed aside the furniture and rolled the rug up into a long thin tube. Dragging it through the house was more difficult than I'd anticipated. The old rug was heavy and seemed to resist my need to move it. But finally I dragged it out the back door, down the steps and over to the trash can. There I left it, not really sure that I was going to drag it to the curb on trash day, but relieved to have it out of the house.
"There!" I said to the empty yard and the heavy rug. "There."
I walked back up the stairs and into the kitchen, filling a pail with hot water and Pine-Sol. Mama always said Pine-Sol and a good airing would run the troubles right out of a house. I was going to give it my best shot.
I scrubbed for an hour before I got to the bedroom and saw the red light flashing on the answering machine. It was a good excuse to take a break. I hit the button and waited while the machine rewound. It was an ancient thing, a leftover from Vernell. He'd wanted to be available twenty-four hours a day to his "people," as he called them. I'd always figured if they wanted you bad enough, they'd call back. Still I found myself using the thing, just in case Sheila needed me. Just in case.
There was a series of four hang-ups and then a familiar voice, gruff and slightly inebriated.
"Like shooting ducks in a barrel, Maggie," Jerry Sizemore's voice grated. "I got some information you oughta have. I'll be at my place until I hear from you, so grab you a swimsuit and come on over here." He rattled off a set of instructions that would take me to the southeast part of Guilford County, apparently down every little side road in the county. Then there was a pause and he chuckled. "If you're thinking I'm gonna tell you this over the phone, you're wrong. And if you're thinking of forgetting to bring your suit, I'll make you sit in the tub naked. What I got on your inheritance is worth it, Maggie." I heard the clink of glass on glass and I knew he'd been pouring another shot of tequila. "Hell, girl, I ain't all that dangerous," he said. "I just like the sight of a pretty girl sitting in my hot tub while I'm discussin' business." The phone line went dead. The little man in the machine dated the call three hours ago. Damn, that Sizemore worked quick.