Desperation Road(2)
2
THE LITTLE GIRL ATE TWO GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES AND A bowl of chocolate ice cream and the woman ate a plate of biscuits and gravy and they each drank several glasses of iced tea. It cost more than she wanted to spend but the way the child’s face seemed to swell with each bite was satisfaction enough. If only for the moment.
After the bill was paid, they sat in the booth without talking, the girl using the crayons the waitress had given her to decorate the blank side of the paper menu. Maben counted her money and she had seventy-three dollars. She folded the bills neatly and stuck them into the front pocket of her shorts and she looked out the window across the parking lot at the row of motel rooms and she thought briefly of getting a room, taking long baths, watching television, and then sleeping with the girl next to her. Between clean sheets. With the air conditioner blowing and the door locked. The girl said look Momma and she held up the paper and showed her a blue a and a red something. Maybe a b. And either a green c or an l.
“That’s good, Annalee,” Maben said. The child smiled and then she put the paper down and she drew a circle and began to create a face. The waitress walked by and asked if they needed something else.
“How much are those rooms?” Maben asked.
“About thirty-five, I think,” the waitress said. “I’ll find out for sure.”
“No,” Maben said. “That’s okay. You got a pay phone?”
“That way,” the waitress said, pointing at the door. “Through there at the bathrooms.”
She touched the top of the girl’s hand and said I’ll be right back and then she followed the directions to the pay phone. A phone book hung from a metal cord and she opened it and began to try to remember the names of the people she used to know. Tried to think of a friend or some down-the-line cousin. Something. Somebody. She looked at the names in the phone book as if one might reach up and poke a finger in her eye and say hey look it’s me. But it didn’t happen. Too much time in between. Too much stuff in between. The kind of stuff that was supposed to make you feel good and it did in the first instant but then it only confused you or rotted you away and tricked you into thinking you needed more. Too much of it. She gave up on names and then she turned to the Yellow Pages and it took her a couple of minutes but she found a shelter that looked like it might help. On Broad Street. She thought she remembered where that was. She ripped the page from the phone book and folded it and stuck it into her pocket and she walked back to the table. It was another five miles to McComb and another two or three miles at least from the interstate to downtown and Broad Street. She didn’t know if the child could go any farther today or not. And there was no guarantee that the shelter would even be there. She had tracked them down before only to get to the front door and find a faded note taped across the top explaining that due to lack of funding we regret that we have closed. Please call the police in case of an emergency.
He had said he’d be right back but she had known by the sound of it that he was lying. But he’d at least left a hundred dollars on top of the television. And he’d left the bag filled with her clothes and the child’s clothes outside the motel room door. It wasn’t as bad as it’d been before. She had almost felt a small victory in being left sympathetically. But that didn’t change the fact that the van was gone and he was gone and she had already forgotten his name and she and the girl had been left alone again in a room that didn’t belong to them. So they’d started walking. Three days ago. Going back to Mississippi because there was nowhere else to go. New Orleans had been no good and Shreveport had been no good and all she got from Beaumont had been the creation of the little girl and she didn’t know why she thought they should head for Mississippi other than that was where the trail had started. She had left with nothing and she was coming back with nothing but another mouth to feed. And now that she was back the heat rising off the asphalt didn’t look any different from the heat rising off the asphalt anywhere else. She had half expected something magical to occur once they crossed the state line and maybe it had with the old man giving them a ride and forty bucks. And as she looked at the ice cream dried in the corners of the child’s mouth she decided that was about as much as she could expect.
“Momma,” the girl said.
“Yes.”
“Are we in Mississippi yet?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Can we stop walking now?”
“Almost.”
“Can we get one of those rooms?”
“Stop asking questions and come on.”
They had slept off the road, walking into clumps of forest that stood back from the interstate, their clothes spread out across the leaves and dirt, eating packages of crackers and potato chips and drinking Cokes and breathing more easily in the cover of the night. They smelled and she knew it and once the girl was finished coloring they walked out of the café and through the gift shop and back toward the truckers’ quarters. They ignored the TRUCKERS ONLY sign and went into the women’s dressing room. Maben stood next to the shower stall while the child bathed herself and after the child was finished and dressed the woman took a shower and felt a relief in the filth that ran down her body and washed down the drain. They took turns drying their hair underneath the hand dryers and the woman found clean T-shirts and shorts for them in the garbage bag. She told the girl to wait in the dressing room and she walked into the convenience store and stole a small bottle of lotion and she returned and lathered the child’s red arms and face and neck and then she did the same for herself. She then washed their socks in the sink and she wrung them and dried them under the hand dryer while Annalee lay stretched across the tile floor with her head resting on the garbage bag. By the time the socks were dry the girl had fallen asleep and Maben sat down next to her and leaned her head back against the wall and prayed that no one would come into the dressing room while the child rested.