Armadillos Page 11

  ‘Where’s Freak?’ he asked.

  I pulled the bag from him. ‘I don’t know. Busy.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he sneered. He reached behind the bar and squeezed some hand gel into his palm. ‘Too busy for Duke,’ he said, tossing his head and rubbing his hands together. ‘Sad times. What about you? You too busy for Duke, too?’

  He fixed me with a stare. I was so busy wondering if there were real eyes behind his contacts that I forgot to answer.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Just… tell her she’s missed, okay?’ He took another ten out of his purse and gave it to me. For a second I thought I saw a glistening in his fake eyes, but he turned away before I could be sure.

  Back at the house, I dropped my precious bag at the bottom of the stairs and went to the kitchen for some water. There was no one around which was just how I liked it. I slurped water from the faucet instead of using a cup, and I took a slice of bread from an unmarked loaf in the cupboard. Their own fault for not putting a name sticker on it. A National Enquirer was lying on the breakfast bar. I was reading about aliens and plastic surgery when I heard something from upstairs, something not normal.

  I don’t know what it was, some instinct that told me to arm myself. I’d lost all notions about getting a gun after landing my pizza job, but once again I found myself wishing I had one. I slipped into the nearest room and grabbed Ricardo’s baseball bat.

  As I made my way up the stairs, it became clearer that someone was being hurt. By the time I got to the top, I knew it was Freak. I knew it was Freak because she sounded like a child.

  All the doors in the hallway seemed to disappear, apart from one which grew bigger than any normal door. I pressed my ear up against it and heard the crying; the safe, heavy weight of the baseball bat in my hand focused my anger.

  Slowly, gently, I pushed the door open.

  Up and down, up and down it went; trembling skin like plucked chicken. Jojo’s voice like a little girl’s beneath the weight of him. Freak’s hair, spread like a fan across the bed.

  She turned her head and saw me. Her face was twisted in pain, her eyes glazed.

  The bat was in my hand. A far-off voice was screaming. I’d turn him into a bug beneath my shoe.

  And I swung the bat.

  When I finished, I turned round.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I asked.

  ‘What the fuck, Aggie?’

  I tried to grab her but she shook me off.

  ‘What the fuck have you done?’

  She fell to her knees and cradled the lump on the floor. She looked like she was crying, but all I could hear was my own ragged breath, and the rush of water between my ears. If she didn’t come now, there was nothing I could do for her.

  She wiped his hair back from his face and kissed him.

  Everything came into clear, cruel focus.

  She’d wanted it.

  I look down at Not Pop, this not-monster, not-sub of a human I’d saved my best friend from. Hard to tell but through the mess I thought I recognized Ade, though I’d never seen him with no clothes on before. Does every butt looked like plucked chicken? I wondered. He was coughing and gasping and one hand was held upwards, as though to say No more, no more.

  A torrent of apologies spilled out of me.

  ‘Help me get him up,’ Freak said.

  But I couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t bear to look at him.

  I was half way down the street when footsteps pounded the sidewalk behind me. I hoisted my bag and ran.

  ‘Aggie! Aggie, hold up!’

  I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. Freak had run all the way from the house wearing only sneakers and a T-shirt that barely covered her ass.

  ‘Go away, Freak. Leave me alone.’

  The cops would be here any minute. They’d find out my name, who I was, where I came from.

  ‘Aggie, stop, will you?’ She grabbed me and spun me round. She put her hands on her knees and bent over, breathless. A couple of kids a few yards down snickered at her bare ass stuck in the air.

  ‘Jeez, you sure can move,’ she complained.

  I’d almost reached the bottom of the road. There was a bus in a few minutes that would take me uptown. I’d start over from there. I kept walking.

  ‘You got to let me go, Freak. I can’t deal with cops.’

  ‘No cops, stupid. Ade said no.’

  I turned in amazement as her words began to sink in. I thought of the mess I’d left on the bedroom floor. ‘I didn’t kill him?’

  Freak laughed and I noticed how over the top it was. She laughed like she was vomiting. It came out in a rush. ‘Jesus, Aggie,’ she said. ‘Quit being such a drama queen. Reckon you got him one, maybe two times. He’s shook up but…’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him, Freak. I swear.’

  ‘Aggie, you’re tall, alright, but you’re skinny as a runt. Hard to tell what was you and what was the baseball bat.’

  ‘But all the blood…’ I said.

  Freak rolled her eyes and tugged me back down the road with her.

  It was a trick. Had to be. Any minute now sirens would come flying down the street and cops would have me in cuffs. There was blood. I knew there’d been blood. But Freak had a strong grip on me and I’d a powerful urge to see if Ade really was okay.

  As she led me down the road, the normality of the street was strange. The sun was sinking behind the rooftops as a couple of cars pulled in, delivering people home from work. The clunk of doors closing. A dog barking. The snickering kids shooting hoops in their front yard stopped to eye us as we passed their gate. Without saying anything we both speeded up.

  The house looked just the same, though everything felt different. As we got closer, the front door opened. I tried to turn back but Freak dragged me on. Monty winked at me as he passed. ‘How do, slugger?’ he said.

  At the top of the steps Freak put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me against the wall.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I should have told you about me and Ade,’ she said. ‘Don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I sensed you’d be jealous. You’re my sister. I love you but I aint got feelings for you that way, Aggie.’

  It took me a minute to unscramble what she was saying, and then I heard her vomity laugh come out of my mouth. Funny how you pick these things up.

  ‘That’s the sickest thing I ever heard of. I aint jealous.’

  I think I put her nose out of joint, but I was past caring. I was still trying to make sense of it.

  ‘You know he’s fucking Marjorie too, right?’ It came out spiteful but I didn’t mean it like that.

  ‘He can fuck who he likes. No one fucks him like me.’

  Freak looked up at the first floor window and waved at Ade, who was looking down at me with such a strange look. Hurt, confused, scared even. Just like a little boy. I doubled over and splashed all over the pavement.

  ‘Jesus, Aggie,’ said Freak as she disappeared inside, disgusted.

  Everyone apart from Ade was in the hallway. Our arrival put paid to their gossip and they backed away from each other to make space for me. Maybe I was just a skinny runt, but when I swung that baseball bat I hit a hole in that house I could fit into.

  There was no blood. I walked right around that whole room and it was dry as bones. I told myself they must have cleaned it. No other explanation I could think of. I got a good whack at him, though. I know because he wore the proof of it beneath his left eye for a week.

  In our house, we lived in the kitchen. There was a fire we only lit on the worst winter nights. Across from the fire there was a bashed-up two-seat sofa that could take me, Jojo and Ash, until me or she or he got too big and we could hardly tell whose leg was whose. In the middle of the room stood the table I’d been born on and where we ate all our meals and read Scripture.

  Beside the fire was a blue easy chair with a gold trim and a fringe around the bottom. Time was I could squeeze behind that chair when me and Jojo played hide-and-seek. Always took her a long time to find me
when I went there, even though I went there a lot.

  The gold trim on the back of the blue chair had been near enough picked off. It hung loose around the bottom, a swing for fairies. It would have made me a fine fairy crown if I’d only wound up the courage to ask Jojo to sew it for me. It was wavy and rough and felt different to the chair, which was smooth the way a baby’s face might feel if you were allowed to stroke it. I liked to let the fringe fall through my fingers, silky and loose and free. I flicked the fringe with my finger and then breathed on it, pretending my breath was the fairies making it move – just a stupid kid’s game. The chair’s legs were little iron balls that let you move it around if you wanted to. Moving the chair made the fringe dance.

  One time I fell asleep behind there, only waking up when Jojo found me. I wouldn’t come out and it made her mad. She yelled at me and pulled the chair away on its little iron balls and dragged me to my feet.

  On one side the fire was burning hot, on the other an icy wind rushed in. I gasped as it reached me. I remember all the lights were on.

  Jojo, too bright.

  Pop was on his knees scrubbing the floor, which was strange because he never did women’s work. Jojo was rough and yanked me past him to the door. Jojo was so mad she was crying. I didn’t know what I’d done.

  I’m sorry, Jojo.

  Snowflakes were blown through the open door, making it seem like it was snowing inside. Like magic.

  Then Cy rose up out of nowhere and blocked our way. Jojo whipped round so fast she almost knocked me over. She dragged me to the back door, again moving round Pop, who was still scrub scrub scrubbing. This time it was Ash who blocked us. I was so sleepy. Jojo picked me up, my face in the crook of her soft neck, her hand on the back of my head.

  Don’t look, Aggie, don’t look.

  Ash and Cy like a pair of bookends. Pop’s back like the shape of a hill, throwing shadows on the ground, and inside, the snow was falling everywhere.

  13

  A couple of days after I’d attacked him, I was called to Ade’s room.

  ‘Shut the door,’ he said, as he sat on his camp bed.

  It was the first time I’d been alone with him. I closed the door, leaving enough space to fit my hand around if I had to make a run for it.

  ‘How’s your eye?’ I said, stupidly. No need to ask. It was taking over half his face.

  ‘Sore,’ he said, matter-of-fact, no malice. ‘Sit down.’

  I crossed my legs and straight away regretted it. I’d just given myself the extra task of untangling myself if I had to move in a hurry. I shifted position so I was half kneeling, half ready to run.

  Ade pulled out papers and began building a joint. Seemed he’d forgotten all about me for a minute. Tobacco fell from his fingers like sprinkles. Then he took a tiny bag of weed and rubbed a precise amount evenly over the tobacco. He shuffled it together, licked the papers to close, and lit up. He took a draw and offered me some. I shook my head. The air came full of smoke and musk while he took another couple of deep draws.

  Unlike me and Freak, Ade had a decent set up. Aside from the camp bed, he had an upside-down cardboard box serving as a bedside table with a wind-up lamp on it. Behind me was a desk covered with stacks of books and paper with a sheet draped over. A separate sheet was pinned over something on another wall. Underneath you could just make out pins and threads making shapes over various diagrams and maps.

  I leaned back on the desk and a folder of loose papers slipped down the side. I pulled it out to place it back, but he snatched it out of my hands and slid it beneath his bed.

  ‘That’s private.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about what happened the other day.’

  ‘I’m real sorry about what I did, Ade. You know that. If I could take it back, I would.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. What I want to know is who sent you?’

  ‘What?’

  He looked at me hard, as though trying to decide something. I stared right back at him. His matted hair had given itself entirely over to dreads now. He shook his head and black snakes rippled down his shoulders.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Never mind. Listen Aggie, I’ve been thinking. I’ve got a lot of people to consider here. A lot of people living under my roof, you know?’

  ‘Sure, Ade.’

  ‘People are nervous, you know? We’ve never had anyone be violent here before you arrived. First day you show up Freak and Marjorie fight, and now I’m wearing this.’ He pointed to his swollen eye. ‘We’ve got a good arrangement here, Aggie. People who need it have shelter. People just like you. That’s a good thing. A fucking good thing, you know?’

  He took another draw and offered me again. This time I took it. I lifted it to my lips and pulled. Smoke caught in my throat and stung my eyes but I managed not to cough. I glanced at Ade, embarrassed, but he was already rolling another joint and hadn’t noticed how shit I was at this. My second draw was smoother, and everything started to get a little fuzzed up. The light in the room got brighter and softer all at the same time. My third draw gave me butterflies in my tummy. They tickled. Ade’s voice broke through my observations. I struggled to pull my attention back to him.

  ‘So if there’s any more violence from you, you’ll be packing your bags. Do you understand?’

  ‘Sure, Ade. I totally understand. I’m real sorry about it, you know? I was set on leaving but Freak pulled me back. Otherwise I’d be gone.’

  ‘I believe in second chances, Aggie.’

  ‘Well, I sure do appreciate that, Ade.’

  ‘Plus, you’re a friend of Freak’s, so…’ He looked right at me and then quickly back down to his papers. Something had changed, just like that. Something heavy and unspoken was in the air between us now.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Aggie?’

  ‘Sure.’ I knew God existed because you got a beating if you said he didn’t.

  ‘I don’t.’

  I looked at him in a new way. The only other person I knew who didn’t believe was Jojo. I’d told her I’d asked God to send Momma home to us and she’d laughed.

  Aint no God, Aggie. If there is, he’s a long time dead.

  Don’t say that, Jojo. You’ll burn in hell for saying that.

  The only hell there is is here on earth.

  ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Ade said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The only hell there is is here on earth. I totally agree. Who’s Jojo anyway?’

  ‘My sister.’

  Forgive her, God, and Baby Jesus please forgive her, too. She don’t mean what she say.

  ‘Where’s she then?’

  ‘Back home, I guess.’ Cooking Pop’s dinner, cleaning Pop’s clothes, keeping Pop happy.

  I am Your child and You are my Father.

  How did we come to be talking about this? I blinked hard and pushed it out of my head.

  ‘You said something about Freak,’ I said, trying to steer him back.

  ‘Did I?’ he laughed.

  ‘Yeah, you said I was Freak’s friend and so…’ I trailed off, waiting for him to fill in the gap.

  Ade screwed up his face and thought. ‘Nope, it’s gone. Where’s home for you then, Aggie? Where’s sister Jojo?’

  My head was spinning. ‘I don’t remember. Where’s your home?’ Always trying to keep the focus away from me. ‘Why did you leave England?’

  ‘Scotland.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘How many times?’

  ‘Scotland’s in England?’ I said. I don’t know what I said that was so funny but he fell off his bed laughing. We were both on the floor now. I placed my hands either side of me to make sure I knew where I was. The window is there, the door is there, and here is the floor, the floor.

  ‘I’m here because I’m concerned for y’all,’ Ade said, in a bad Texas accent. ‘Y’all into pounding your stupid Bibles all over each other. I’m here to put an end to y’all’s nonsense.’

  ‘And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy b
rother Abel? And he answered, I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?’

  Ade was so surprised his eyebrows almost flew off his face. I was a little surprised myself.

  ‘The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the earth,’ I said.

  ‘You can actually quote that shit?’ He’d have tripped on his jaw if he’d tried to walk.

  ‘Guess it never leaves you…’ I shrugged, and then we laughed till we cried, but only one of us was crying with laughter.

  ‘You know what, Aggie?’

  I shook my head and Ade leaned in close, a manic glint in his eye. He drew a circle in the air above his head with one finger.

  ‘All around, Aggie. Man, we’re up against it. The walls have ears.’ He looked at me straight. ‘But you know what else?’ I shook my head again. ‘There’s always more than meets the eye, but no matter how much there is, there’s never God.’

  He laughed to himself, a nasty, quiet laugh. Then he lit another one and lay back on the bed.

  ‘Biggest fucking conspiracy theory there is,’ he said to the ceiling. ‘Oh, man. This country fucking stinks. I swear it’s rotten to the fucking core.’

  I sat on the floor thinking I should probably be offended, but I was mainly just trying to make sense of this conversation.

  Next day he remembered why he’d called me into his room. He was worried about Freak. So worried he’d got stoned with me instead. Did I know where she kept disappearing to? I had to admit that after all these months of sharing a room, watching her sleep, letting her cut me – no, I did not know where she kept disappearing to.

  The days were long and empty in that ramshackle house. I hardly went out in case Freak came back and I missed her. One day I passed her on the stairs. She was carrying a stack of papers and would have gone straight past me if I hadn’t stopped her.

  ‘Hey, stranger,’ I said.

  She grabbed my arm before I could say much more. ‘Listen, Aggie, I don’t have time right now. I’ll come see you later, okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. What else could I say? I was rewarded with a smile and a kiss on the cheek before she hurried up the stairs and disappeared into Ade’s room.