Hummingbird Salamander(44)
From a mythical place long ago and far away.
[50]
Back inside, I was still fighting the anger. How far had Hellbender infiltrated my life, without me knowing? I put the gun and ammo down on the kitchen table, and I took Shovel Pig and dumped her contents. I was shaking. I didn’t realize the violence of the act until it was over. How much had been inside the purse. How upending it had been like pouring an ocean of “stuff” onto the table. How some of it fell off, so I spent the next few minutes picking it up.
All the flotsam and jetsam that accretes when you don’t clean out a purse over time. Old receipts, worn and yellowing, from years ago. Coupons for canned food you never used. Extra school photos of your daughter you meant to send to your husband’s relatives. Expired car insurance cards. Lots of gum. So many sticks of gum, I was just thankful little of it had come unwrapped and stuck to the inside of Shovel Pig. Perfunctory office prep: lipstick and some makeup I only used if we had a client meeting in-house.
All my various phones, burner and regular, and, of course, Bog. Some I had to pry out of their separate compartments to check underneath.
Paint swatches, cut-out articles of gardening advice I’d never used. A few folded-up documents from work, from long-ago projects. Two lanyards from conventions and three of those annoying pin-on types. The name tag from my first job, in fast food, that I’d kept for luck or out of nostalgia. Tampons. So many tampons, lost in crevices and various pockets. A couple exhausted AA batteries and my magnifying glass.
A worn paperback copy of a mystery novel I was slowly working my way through six months later. Stuff that had fallen apart and was hard to identify. A bottle of expired painkillers from when I’d hurt my knee. Keys to old houses and apartments, all on the same key chain, like I needed a museum of keys.
Condoms I immediately shoved back in their little zippered pocket.
Like all huge purses, Shovel Pig had also eaten many smaller, worn-out-looking purses. A couple hadn’t even been used, and I couldn’t understand why I’d ever bought them.
Why hadn’t I gotten rid of them? Why had I kept any of it?
No wallet—I kept that in my front pants pocket at all times—but plenty of weaponry. In fact, the weaponry, once laid out in a row, was extensive in a way that made me laugh. Taser, pepper spray, a gutting knife from the farm I’d rescued because of the smooth bone handle. Brass knuckles in plastic wrap. Several more pocket-and penknives. Small flashlight that wasn’t a weapon, but seemed weapons-adjacent. It was like a mini go-bag.
But although I searched every nook and cranny, every crevice, I couldn’t find anything unusual. I stared suspicious at a puzzle piece, paranoid that someone had put it there, until I remembered it was a memento of a really fun family night.
No sign of surveillance. No bug. Nothing that bulged in the lining. Nothing restitched.
I shoved most of it back in, both relieved and upset. Something about all of that detritus of my life, so ordinary, but also all the garbage I’d been carrying around. Overwhelmed by it.
The smell of Band-Aids hung over everything. More than anything else, I’d had Band-Aids in there.
“Mom! What are you doing with that?”
Startled, pulled out of my own thoughts. I’d forgotten my daughter was already home.
* * *
Even with all that has happened since, I return to that moment so many times. In my dreams. In daylight. Now that I have no idea whether she is safe or not safe. No control over that. But, then, Silvina was in my head. Hummingbirds and Silvina.
My daughter stood there in the doorway of our house, a look of horror on her face. For a moment, I thought it was just me. That there was something terrible about me. Then I realized I was holding the gun.
I shoved the gun back in Shovel Pig, tried to be casual, even though that was ridiculous. Half the contents of my purse lay strewn across the kitchen table.
“Just cleaning my gun,” I said. Trying to sound casual just made it weirder.
“Mom! Since when have you had a gun?”
“Awhile,” I said. “Sorry—I should have told you. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just a precaution.” Pathetic.
She was looking at me like I was an intruder. I felt small. I felt terrible.
“Does this have something to do with the man watching the house from the woods the other day?”
My heart. Oh, my heart stopped a moment, hiccupped, or something in my brain did.
“What man?”
“Don’t lie to me!” The anger in my daughter just then brought Shot’s ghost into her features. Made me angry at her, irrationally.
“We’re dealing with it. Your father and I.”
Her cue to drop it, but she ignored me.
“And what about what you hid in the trunk of your car? I saw you. I saw that. What is going on?”
My center of gravity shifted. I put a hand out to the chair next to me. Unbearably tired. Like I could sleep for a thousand years.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” In a sense, it was true.
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said.
“Language.”
She sat down at the table opposite and glared at me. I said nothing.
“Fine, don’t tell me. I know already anyway,” she said.
Relief in her saying that, in a sense. This daughter who had always been, if I were honest, a distant and difficult beast. Never really knew what was in her eyes, even when she was very young. This baby with the furry head that went bald so quickly, only to sprout hair again, and then, magically, was old enough to be looking at me as if she were the adult. That almost teenager who scorned us and needed us. Who felt breakable and yet broke things so easily.