Don't Kiss Me: Stories(26)

LETA’S MUMMY



Leta got a mummy up under the floorboards. You could see it rising when her daddy’s got the TV too loud or when her brother lights up the toilet with his beer shits. That mummy is a shit-hating kind of mummy. One thing about Leta’s mummy is, it’ll take a bite if you ain’t paying mind. So you got to always try to look like you don’t taste all that good. Leta lost a chunk of her hand to that mummy and the worst thing is, it just gummed on it for a while and let it thud to the floor along with the rest of its cheek. Then it bayed like its heart was broken and shrunk down into the floor. Leta’s daddy told her hush, least he didn’t get you in the titty or the face, and I nodded and Leta tried to nod, but it’s hard to when your mouth can’t close cause you screaming.

I spend a lot of time over to Leta’s cause my momma works nights and when she don’t she is on our back porch with her Dixie cup. Sometimes she get to wailing and I just got to go. Then I come back in the morning and wash out her cup like nothing. To me the worst part about the mummy ain’t its appetite for flesh or the fact that it smell like infinity diapers, all on fire. It’s when it bays like it do, cause it sounds like my momma. Both of em just crying like they stuck, like they brain got sucked out and tears put back in its place.

Sometimes it feels good to shake a fist and yell, That f*ckin mummy! right along with Leta’s daddy. Only when I do it I am thinking of my momma.

At school ever since her hand got chewed up Leta is the shit. Girls be chewing they hands all through class to get em nice and mangled, and boys be offering up the high five and then saying, No, the other one, when Leta raises her good hand. In science class Mr. Howe puts pictures of dead people on the projector, some of em all wrapped up like Leta’s mummy, and explains how when a mummy is a mummy they ain’t rising up to stink up your living room. Leta got her head down, but I can tell her eyes are open, she is hearing every word. I guess I see his point, it seems like a horror that can’t be real, but I raise my hand and tell Mr. Howe he’s a dumbass anyway.

My momma comes to school to hear what a bitch I am. Her hair all ruined to one side and dried-up spit at the corner of her mouth, coat on over her nightdress. Might as well be wrapped up and tossed under the house. In front of the principal she puts her hand on my arm and says, You got to try harder. When he ain’t looking that hand goes hard, mummified, digs in. It burns and I can’t help it, I get tears. I put my hand over hers and dig in just as hard. When the principal looks up he says, Ain’t that nice, and we let go.

That mummy never bit at me, but when it do I am prepared to bite back.

In detention the retarded boy asks me could I give the mummy a letter he wrote. I feel too tired to tell the boy that the mummy ain’t got eyes, or a brain, has never bayed about a hankering to take up reading. I just take the letter and put my head back down. Later I see that the letter is a drawing of the retarded boy and the mummy holding hands out front of the library. When the mummy rises up to windmill at Leta’s brother that night, I flick the letter at it and it comes back all gummed to a pulp, a brown turdy glob me and Leta got to clean away soon as the mummy is done with its terror.

Leta’s family starts going to church to see if God can do something about the mummy. Leta says she’s fixing to pray for the mummy to be a people again, so she can put its hand in her momma’s old blender, see how it likes that. I ain’t going to church with them cause I seen how the women fall to tears and the men raise up they hands and the pastor just yelling at all of them till his face is black how the world is ending and it’s like yeah, well, the world ended for that mummy and it seems just f*ckin dandy with it.

One Sunday my momma starts in with her cup, from the kitchen telling me I had a daddy but he was burnt to a crisp over to the war, and this would move me but for the fact that Momma told me a while back my daddy was in jail, and before that my daddy was the mayor and I shouldn’t tell no one. Oh, my momma says, oh oh oh. Crying over her cup for whatever daddy she pleases. Bye, I told her.

Leta’s house was empty cause they was at church, but I could hear the mummy inside, they’d left the TV on cause Leta’s daddy thinks it’d help tire the mummy out while they gone.

It ain’t like the mummy can see you, cause where its eyes was is just hollows with glints of slime, but that mummy lurched my way soon as I came into that living room. Ennh, it said at me. Yeah? I said at it. It windmilled, flinging its tatters my way, feet stuck planted dumb in the floorboards like always. Ennnnnnh!

That f*ckin mummy. How it ate Leta’s brother’s girlfriend’s braid one time, and she ain’t never come back. How her daddy had to learn the Internet just to find out how to get rid of a mummy, and then there wasn’t even no useful information, and now every time we got to go on there for school we got to close a dozen of them pop-up things. Leta so shameful about her stump hand. How living here would be way better than living with Momma but for this f*ckin mummy.

Ennh, the mummy said again. Mad as usual, mad at nothing and everything, take your pick. Like how Momma could choose when to be sad, when to get all brainless. Well, I can make choices too, I screamed at that mummy.

I went into the kitchen and set a pot to boil. When the water burbled up I brought it over, close as I cared to get, and tossed it over the mummy’s raggedy head. Threw Leta’s daddy’s coffee mug at its crotch. Flung Leta’s brother’s metal bat at it. Threw a lamp, threw the basket of dusty magazines Leta’s momma left behind. Tried to throw the TV, but there were too many cords to untangle. Threw all the VHSs in the drawer, then threw the drawer. Threw pillows a fruit bowl the remote the TV guide a cinnamon candle the curtain rod a dining chair another dining chair Leta’s daddy’s best knife a frozen chicken another dining chair Leta’s math book three old Big Gulps a hamster cage and a broom at it and when I got tired I squirted lighter fluid at it and lit that f*ckin mummy on fire. He didn’t even yell.