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Chapter Twelve

“What do you like, Wrennie?” Wren looked up at her father, another question she wasn’t expecting. He was always doing things like that. Digging through and looking under her rocks, trying to find what lay hidden there.

“I like purple, and I like the sun, and I like my tree, and I like Mommy...” Wren looks out the window because she can never stare directly at Mack’s face. “And I like you.”

She looks over, makes sure his eyes are back on the road. She watches his lips lift into a smile, and she looks at his hand clutching the steering wheel, the one with the black tattoo. It’s a heart but not a pretty heart. It’s the organ that beats inside her chest like Daddy told her. Sometimes, when they’re out looking for car parts, ladies like to stare at his hand and then roll their eyes up to the clouds. And Wren feels such pain that it borders on hatred. Because she knows those same ladies pick their noses and scratch their behinds and yell at their perfectly good husbands.

It’s another one of her rocks. The one that protects the truth.

“I like you, too, Wrennie,” Daddy says before turning up their music, their music that’s loud and angry and never really has much to say. Sometimes Daddy turns it off, his face far off and no longer in the truck. Sometimes he turns it up and drums his fingers on the steering wheel while Wren makes up words to the songs.

She looks over again at his heart-marked hand and the fingers that tap against the wheel. She hovers her own hand out in the chasm between them.

#

SHE’S SEEN THEM BEFORE when they’re on the bed or on the couch, her mother a seashell inside of her father. They cry and it’s loud in her ears even though it’s really very soft. She doesn’t like seeing Daddy cry. She’s okay when Mommy cries. There’s something more natural about it.

She always gets the urge to go up and crawl in between the both of them. To take their hands and hold them to her heart. But there’s something so deeply connected when they softly shake into their pain that Wren feels like she’s outside of the house, looking through the window.

And besides, she knows there’s nothing she can really do.

She’s only a little girl.

#

SOMETIMES SHE STAYS with Mimi when Mommy and Daddy work. Once she stayed with Abuelo. Mommy wants her to do preschool but Daddy says school is for losers. Mommy hits him on the arm.

She likes Mimi’s house. It’s very big, and there’s a large pool in the back. Grandpa Glenn uses a long handled net to scoop up leaves. He taught her how to do this once then went back inside to make a few phone calls.

When Mimi found her by herself with the skimmer, she wasn’t very happy.

But mostly, time with Mimi is some of her favorite time. Mimi likes to bake cookies with her and took her out to ride a horse once. Sometimes they go to the park or get ice cream.

One time, she told Daddy that Mimi must have been the best mom, besides Mommy of course. He didn’t say anything, just turned up the music.

#

THERE’S A MAN IN THE wedding photo that Daddy and Mommy won’t talk about. He has dark hair like Daddy’s and stands next to Mimi in the photo. There’s something about him that Wren tries to dissect.

“Who’s this?” she asked one time with the frame tucked in her arm like a baby. Her mother was taking a bath and Daddy was sitting and waiting to leave like he does some nights though he won’t ever tell her where he goes.

“Mr. Regret.”

“He live near us?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.” 

“Do I know him?”

“No, fortunately,” Daddy said. The light in the living room half-shadowed Mommy who was now standing damp in the doorway.

“What you got, baby girl?” she asked. She was wearing her blue terry cloth robe and naked feet.

“Mr. Regret,” Wren said, and Daddy laughed loudly in her ear.

#

SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER the last day. It hurts when she tries to construct it in her mind. She knows there was ice cream and their music crammed tight between them in the truck cab and Roy McGruffin that became hers when moments before he hadn’t even existed.

But she only knows that last part because Mommy told her.

What she does remember is the night.

She woke up to find Mommy alone in her bed and Daddy alone in a tree. And even though she stood close to him hovering above her and then stood close to Mommy who stayed belly flat against their porch’s wooden floor, the one thing that bites at her like acid on her skin is the fact that she was there. With each of them.

And neither one even noticed.

#

AT THE FUNERAL, HER skin itched. She didn’t scratch at it and didn’t tell anyone, not even Mimi who asked her every ten seconds if she was okay.

It didn’t seem like a good time to talk to Mommy about anything.

The itching began to burn when Grandpa Glenn held her waist, and she hovered above Daddy who wasn’t Daddy. She felt like the lead character in a play, like everyone was expecting something from her, so she dipped down and kissed his cheek that tasted like Mommy’s make up.

After the funeral she kept her mind off the itching, the burning, the chemical taste of her father in her mouth by dry swallowing carrot sticks and explaining to her baby cousin, Antonio, how Daddy had died.

Wren likes to think Antonio would have clapped if his arms had been strong enough.

That night, Mommy wants her to sleep with her. And Wren tells her yes even though she wants to be alone in her bed and cry into Roy’s chewed up fur. Instead, she lets Mommy hold her, and Wren smashes her face into her pillow.

She won’t cry. She has to be strong for Mommy.

#

“WHAT WE NEED IS AN adventure.” Even at four, it sounds like a distraction. But Wren makes her face happy, working her arm fat with her pinching fingers where Mommy can’t see. She has Roy on her lap and places her chin on top of his worn, fuzzy head.

“Where are we going?”

“A new exciting place called Arkansas.”

“Mimi and Grandpa Glenn coming?”

“No, sweetie.”

Wren bit her lip. It would be hard to shoulder the burden all alone, but maybe she could use her happy voice for a couple of days to keep Mommy focused.

“Okay,” she says and breaks out into a big smile.

“Wren, we’re going to be so happy living there,” Mommy says. Her long black hair frames her face like curtains.

“I know,” Wren says weakly. She grabs her mother’s hand with its missing tattoo.

#

MIMI CRIES A LOT. HER face is red and puffy, and she takes her magic pills Dr. Nease prescribed her. She’s mad–”but not at you, little duck”–and then her eyes narrow like she’s staring someone down.

Grandpa Glenn doesn’t seem to be too fazed.

That’s the last time she sees Mimi before they leave. Mama explains they have to hurry because she has a job waiting for her. And Wren imagines the job is dressed all nice in a suit and tie, waiting expectantly at a restaurant while he asks the waiter for more bread.

The move is an adventure but not the best kind. She’s stuck in the back of the car with Roy McGruffin, and she falls asleep to Mommy singing about it being too late with Carole King.

When she wakes up, they’re there. Wherever there is.

#

SHE GOES TO A PLACE called Little Chicks. There are no chicks there to pet. Just screaming children and women who carry heavy weight in their arms and legs. They’re nothing like Mommy who’s thin and beautiful and everything Wren will want to be when she grows up. Except for Ms. Melanie, but she has a mean face.

Wren doesn’t like the way the women look at Mommy when she turns her back to leave.

It’s not horrible until Father’s Day rolls around. They make key chains but Wren cuts a long line of rawhide and beads it like a bracelet. “For Daddy,” she says to Jamie Hooper who has a finger up his nose. For Daddy, she says, but this time inside her head.

#

FOR HER FIFTH BIRTHDAY, they go to Dairy Queen. Mommy gets ice cream dipped in chocolate, and Wren gets a cup of vanilla with M&Ms sprinkled on top. She watches Mommy bite into the chocolate and then lick the vanilla underneath. She’s methodical about it like she’s here, but she’s not really here.

“How old was Daddy?” Wren asks her ice cream.

Mommy shoves the palm of her hand into one eye but then returns to her work. She tastes the vanilla on her lips when she says, “Twenty-six.”

“How old are you?” Wren asks.

“Twenty-seven.”

“What does being grown up feel like?” A small family–a mother, father, and little boy–sits down at the bench next to them.

Mommy looks like she’s thinking hard on this one. She looks at the family and then looks at Wren. “It feels like making all the decisions and having nobody to blame but yourself.”

That night, Mommy has her tummy troubles. Sometimes, Wren can hear it in the background of her conscience, her mother making friends with the toilet. She usually cries afterwards, and Wren drifts off to the sound of Mommy’s head making contact with the bathroom wall. But this time there’s no crying or soft thud of skull against plaster. So Wren tiptoes to their shared bathroom where Mommy lays on the ground, Wren takes the dirty washcloth from the edge of the tub and stands on her plastic stool in front of the sink. She lets cool water soak it through before she wrings it hard and wipes down Mommy’s sweaty face. Mommy looks up at her, and when she realizes what she’s doing, her eyes look like two birds frantic in their cages. But Wren puts her hand on Mommy’s cheek and smiles into those eyes.

Because Wren knows blaming herself is a battle her mother will never win.

#

SHE DOESN’T LIKE RHONDA very much. Actually, she doesn’t mind Rhonda as much as she minds Rhonda’s mother.

The woman is loud and invades the apartment like she owns it. Her feet on the coffee table, screaming pink nail polish on her toes. To Wren, they look like tiny pigs waving flags.

Rhonda’s mother holds her own mother hostage while Wren pretends to sleep or stealthily eyes them from the hallway. I stand next to Wren while she watches. While her heart pounds her ribs.

“Remember, not everyone makes a good friend,” her mother sometimes says when Wren gets home tired from the politics of Little Chicks.

Wren watches Rhonda’s mother fill up her glass with liquid from the brown bottle on the coffee table. She takes the glass and tilts her head back, shiny teeth bared to the ceiling. 

#

FOR A WHILE THINGS are quiet.

And then they’re not.

She’s sitting at the toy bin with Connor and his sister Misti. Connor has a bowl cut and a crusty red scab below his left eye and his sister doesn’t seem to fare any better with the palm-sized bruise on her bicep. Wren had felt a tug of empathy the first time she saw their tiny bodies marked up that way, the abrasions landing in different places depending on what day it was. But then Connor had to go and open his mouth.

“You’re such a doo-doo faced bird brain.” Connor is grabbing up tiny plastic soldiers with a sticky hand and doesn’t even have the decency to look Wren in the eye when he says it. Misti laughs, her unwashed hair too close to Wren’s nose.

Maybe he’s right, she thinks, and before I can touch the top of her head, the one with the coffee-colored strands growing closer to her shoulders, she’s cohabited with the thought and made a nice bed for it.

“Wren.” Ms. Melanie is in the doorway. Her face looks unlike the face she always gives. The meanness is gone. Wren is worried.

Behind Ms. Melanie are two police officers. Wren takes a trip back to her tree and remembers the breeze on her face and her father’s feet as the police cars rolled up into their yard. There was one, a young black man who was new to the force who put a blanket on her shoulders and sat with her inside the house. She remembered he was kind enough. Kind enough when everybody else had forgotten to be.

“Uh-oh! Doodie Police are here!” Connor says, and the last thing Wren will ever remember from her old life is the sound of Misti laughing.