The Familiar Dark(39)
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My mama doesn’t really have friends. Not the kind you’re thinking of, anyway. No one she goes to lunch with or tells her secrets to. No one she can count on when the chips are down. But if she was pressed to name a friend, Marion is probably who she’d pick. They’ve known each other their whole lives, from what I can gather. To say they like each other might be stretching the truth. I’ve heard my mama bitch about Marion more often than she’s praised her. But they’re cut from the same cloth, honor the same code. Stick together, don’t snitch, hit first, and hit hard. They understand each other, my mama and Marion.
I didn’t see Marion as often as I used to, when she was a frequent visitor to my mama’s trailer. Her family had owned the falling-down Bait & Tackle for generations, but it was a place I generally tried to avoid—dark, cramped, and smelly. I only set foot inside when I was desperate for some essentials and both the Piggly Wiggly and the general store were closed. I always swore a half gallon of milk from the Bait & Tackle left an aftertaste of rotten fish in your mouth. Buying anything there made you feel poor and dirty. The Bait & Tackle might have been an institution around here, but anybody who could afford it drove ten miles down the road to buy their hooks and worms somewhere else.
The one constant inside the store, besides the smell, was Marion herself. She held court from behind the cracked counter, an ancient cash register on one side of her and an overflowing, ceramic ashtray on the other. My mama smokes, but Marion smokes. Takes after a carton of cigarettes like it’s her job. So it wasn’t exactly a shock to find her puffing away on an unfiltered Marlboro when I stepped through the door.
“Well, good goddamn,” Marion said, loud. “Is that little Evie Taggert I spy?”
“Hi, Marion,” I called, picking my way past buckets writhing with worms.
“Don’t mind those,” Marion said. “Fucking Earl Willows thinks he’s gonna get rich digging up half his backyard and bringing it in here. Man’s a moron.” She shook her head, tapped a long cylinder of ash off her cigarette. “How you been, girl?”
“Oh, you know,” I said, looking away.
“Not good, is what I’m guessing. Some kind of bullshit, what happened to your Junie.”
In other places, the murder of two little girls would have blanketed the entire town in horror. Here, it was just another bad day. I hesitated, not sure of the appropriate response, before finally settling on a half-hearted “Yeah, it was.”
“You hungry?” Marion asked. “’Cause I got a vat of that roadkill chili in back. Little spicy this time, but you’re welcome to a bowl.”
Marion’s chili was the stuff of legend, and I’d eaten a hundred bowls of it in my lifetime. When I used to come in here with Junie, she’d try hard not to wrinkle up her nose at the sight of it. Said she couldn’t imagine slurping down a spoonful of tire-flattened raccoon or squashed opossum. She was worried she’d barf before she got it swallowed and then Marion would smack her on the back of the head the way she did the boys who tried to steal Slim Jims off the counter. It had always made me a little proud that Junie refused the chili. Proof she wasn’t so hungry she’d eat anything to fill her belly. Tangible evidence that I was a better mama than my own.
“No thanks. No chili for me today.”
Marion eyed me over the new cigarette she was lighting. “What’s brung you my way? I’m not exactly a regular stop.” Her voice was friendly enough, but her eyes were hard. She knew I wanted something from her, wasn’t there to shoot the shit or buy a loaf of bread. And familiarity didn’t buy me any special favors. Another way Marion was like my mama. You had to earn every scrap.
I sidled closer to the counter. The shop looked empty, but someone could be lurking in one of the shadowy corners, listening. I leaned on the ancient floor freezer, the glass coated with a sheen of dirty frost and inside gutted fish stacked right next to freezer-burned popsicles and stale ice cream sandwiches. “My mama told me you might know something about Izzy Logan.” I paused. “And the man she was seeing.”
“Did she now?” Marion shook her head. “Not like your mama to be running her mouth.”
Frustration rose up in me, a black, swamping wave. I didn’t have time for this bullshit. To jump through Marion’s hoops. My daughter was dead, and people could either get on board and help me or get the hell out of my way. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
Marion blew a plume of smoke in my direction. “Yeah, I’ll tell you.” She reached out and snagged my wrist in her hand, tightened her fingers until I winced. “But don’t go getting too big for your britches, you hear? I tell your mama how you talked to me, and she’s liable to teach you a lesson on respecting your elders.”
I stared back at her until she dropped my wrist. “I’ll take my chances.”
I don’t know what I expected, but Marion’s big booming laugh definitely wasn’t it. “Well, look at you,” she hooted. “I thought maybe that mouth of yours was gone for good.”
“Nope,” I told her. “Just been in hiding.” That mouth one more thing I buried when Junie was born. Wanting to teach her a better way to approach the world. One that wouldn’t leave her judged as poor white trash and not much else. But now I wondered if maybe a mouth like I used to have might have helped save her. Maybe she’d have been more likely to scream. To tell someone to go fuck themselves. To fight back. Or maybe it would have only made the knife move faster. Truth is, there’s no good way to navigate being female in this world. If you speak out, say no, stand your ground, you’re a bitch and a harpy, and whatever happens to you is your own fault. You had it coming. But if you smile, say yes, survive on politeness, you’re weak and desperate. An easy mark. Prey in a world full of predators. There are no risk-free options for women, no choices that don’t come back to smack us in the face. Junie hadn’t learned that yet. But she would have, eventually. We all do, one way or the other.