Valentine(27)

Guess I’m up. I pull the bedspread over the kids and place a pillow longways between the baby and the edge of the bed. The lights in the kitchen and living room are already turned on, but I flip on the rest of them as I walk through the house—Aimee’s bedroom, the bathroom and hall closet. The baby’s room I leave dark, apart from the small night-light next to his changing table. In the living room, I reach behind my new draperies and check the sliding-glass door that leads to the back patio. Because my new front door doesn’t fit right on the doorframe, I check that too. One night last week, I went to bed thinking it was locked, but at two o’clock, when I got up to pee and check on the baby, it was standing wide open. For the rest of the night, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, Old Lady lying on the floor next to my feet like a faithful dog. Now I open the door to make sure the porch light hasn’t burned out and then push it firmly closed, lock it, jiggle the doorknob, do it all again.

The wind moves from window to window, a small animal sharpening its claws on the screens. Out at the ranch, you hear this sound and you think possum or maybe an armadillo. Here in town, you might think of a squirrel or somebody’s cat. Lately the wind makes me think of animals that have not been here for a hundred years, panthers and wolves, or twisters that threaten to lift my children impossibly high in the air, only to fling them back to the earth. I turn on the weather report and stand in the kitchen smoking a cigarette, drinking one of the beers Robert keeps here. My beers, Mary Rose, he would say. A man doesn’t keep things in his own house. When I exhale, I lean over the kitchen sink and slowly blow the smoke down the drain. Robert pays the rent, but I don’t think of this house as his. This belongs to me, and my kids.

Last week, I thought I saw Dale Strickland’s truck parked down the street and then again in the parking lot at Strike-It-Rich. Yesterday, I saw him standing in Mrs. Shepard’s front yard, looking toward my house. I have seen him in other places, too. But he is in jail. I call down there every morning and every afternoon to make sure he didn’t escape or the judge hasn’t decided to let him post bail.

I see Gloria Ramírez, too. Yesterday morning, when Suzanne Ledbetter knocked on the door with a plate of cookies, I stood perfectly still for a few seconds with my hand on the doorknob thinking it might be Gloria on the other side, more wreckage than child. Yesterday afternoon, when Mrs. Shepard sent Ginny’s daughter to my front door with a casserole—the third that old heifer has sent over in as many weeks, I throw them straight into the trash can—I stood blinking in the doorway for a few seconds at the tall, dark-haired child standing on my porch. Debra Ann looks just like her mother, big and square-shouldered, dark-brown hair, gray eyes that look right through you. I knew your mom in high school, I said. She helped me once, when I was having a bad day. I took the dish, gave her my thanks, and gently closed my front door. Gloria could be any of our girls, I thought, and sat down right there in the hall, and cried until Aimee came and stood over me. Are you okay? she asked me. And I said, of course I am, because she is my daughter, and a child. She asked if we should call her grandma, my mother, and see if she might come over and help us out. Absolutely not, I told her. Grandma has her hands full. I reminded her of my two youngest brothers still living at home, and my dad’s work delivering truckloads of water all over West Texas, and my brother’s three kids who are living there while he works a rig in South America. If we call Grandma, I say, she will think something’s wrong. We take care of our own business.

Who was that girl at the front door? Aimee had been watching from the kitchen window.

I don’t know, I lied. Just some little girl that lives in the neighborhood.

She looked like my age. Was she nice?

I don’t know, Aimee. She looked—tall for her age, big-boned. I don’t want my daughter making friends. If she makes friends, she will want to run all over the neighborhood and I can’t have her out there. I don’t tell her that Debra Ann Pierce is the spitting image of her mama, a quiet, thoughtful girl who always had a book in her hand. I don’t tell her that I cannot reconcile that teenager who stood with me in the school parking lot with the woman who has left her daughter behind.

Aimee hopped from one foot to the other, bouncing up and down like a tennis ball. Maybe I could go outside and see if she wants to ride bikes with me?

Outside. I rested my hand on Aimee’s head, pushing gently so she would stop bouncing. Maybe in another month or so, I told her. Don’t we have everything we need here?

I’m bored, she said, and I promised her we would be ready to have some company for her birthday in August. If you get that Daisy BB rifle you’ve been asking for, I said, maybe she’ll come over and y’all can shoot cans in the backyard.

But Mama, it’s only June! My daughter said this like I am still living in February, like I don’t know the day or the month.

There’s plenty of time to meet these girls, but you and me—I held her soft and pale cheeks between my hands and looked into her blue eyes—how much more time do we have together? You’re going to be ten!

I am going to be the first two-digit number, a composite number, she said.

And I’m going to keep you safe, Aimee, I said. I will always keep you safe.

Day in and day out?

It has become a little ritual of ours since we moved into town. I say, I will keep you safe, and Aimee says, Day in and day out? But that afternoon she frowned and looked as if she might argue. When the baby started whimpering, revving himself up for a good cry, I was grateful for the excuse to leave the room.