Armadillos Read online

  We were having a barbecue using an old grill Monty had salvaged, or at least that was the plan until a red-faced, flustered Virginia turned up with a couple of flapping packages beneath her arms.

  ‘I didn’t know they’d still be alive,’ she said, as she released the chickens into the yard. They scurried to the farthest point away from the barbecue, and began to peck the ground.

  ‘Where’s our food?’ Monty asked, grill fork in hand.

  ‘You’re looking at it,’ Virginia waved a hand in the general direction of the chickens, who looked none the worse for wear after their journey. She lifted some bottled water and drained half the contents.

  ‘“Come out to the farm,” my sister says. “Take a couple of birds away with you.” Why I thought they’d be trussed and ready for cooking is anyone’s guess.’

  She poured some water into her hand and patted her face and back of her neck. Monty’s shoulders started to go, and then he let it out, a full-on belly laugh. It spread around the group until we were all laughing. Tawanna collapsed against Lloyd, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Bless your heart, Virginia. Do they do tai chi? You’ll have company in the mornings now.’

  ‘What? No!’ Monty cut in. ‘I got the grill all ready here.’

  We sobered up at that, and fell silent. Scratch, scratch, scratch. The birds moseyed closer to us.

  ‘Can’t we keep them?’ asked Marjorie, looking slightly pale. ‘We can always use eggs.’

  ‘Long term, it makes sense,’ mused Ricardo.

  Virginia shook her head. ‘They’re rescue birds. Their laying days are behind them. Might get a couple a week, if we’re lucky.’

  ‘They could just be pets,’ said Marjorie.

  ‘No way,’ said Monty. ‘I want to eat them. That was the plan.’

  ‘Yeah, Monty, but we didn’t know they’d be living, did we?’

  ‘All chickens are living before you eat them, Marj.’

  ‘How do we make them… not living?’ asked Ricardo.

  We all turned to look at the chickens. One of them pecked the ground at Lloyd’s feet. Tawanna had tucked her feet beneath her backside for safety.

  ‘I can do it,’ I said. Everyone stared open-mouthed.

  ‘Well, aint you full of surprises,’ said Monty. He took two large steps to the wood pile, lifted the axe and passed it over.

  ‘Nah, don’t need. Give me the broom instead.’

  ‘I’m going inside,’ said Marjorie. ‘Tell me when it’s done.’

  I placed my hands over the closest bird, holding its tail and legs together, forcing it to lie down. I told Monty to lay the broom handle over the bird’s neck, and I placed my feet on it, either side of the bird’s head, pulling the body towards me until the neck cracked. A collective groan went up around the group.

  We were all hungry, so I skinned the bird instead of plucking. When it was ready to cook, I eyed up its friend.

  ‘Anyone know how to play chicken shit bingo?’

  Dusk was setting in. The backyard was littered with empty beer cans and paper plates. Monty’s guitar gave us music and our bellies were full, though the meat had been tough. Our makeshift bingo board was covered in birdshit, and Marjorie had guessed the right number nine out of twelve times. Tawanna said she had the gift of second sight.

  ‘In that case, I prophesize this chicken is staying alive,’ announced Marjorie, cradling it on her lap. ‘I wanna play chicken shit bingo every night.’

  ‘Yeah, Aggie,’ smiled Monty. ‘You sure brought something new to this house. Where was it you fell off the turnip truck?’

  I laughed. It was hard to take offense at Monty. He was the goofiest guy I’d known. He could be annoying, but hell, who couldn’t? I took in the faces around me: Tawanna, Lloyd, Ricardo, Brandon, Virginia, Monty – all of them dozy and content. Tawanna’s hand caressed her round belly, even though it was still no rounder than it had ever been. Everyone knew she was pregnant now and the news seemed to bring out the best in everyone. Even Marjorie seemed almost human, clucking away at her new bird friend. I didn’t want to be the one to kill that bird. I’d a feeling it was here to stay.

  The peace was broken by loud voices coming from inside the house. I turned just as Ade burst out, his hair swinging wildly around his shoulders as he scanned the group. His eyes settled on mine.

  ‘You.’

  He moved towards me, stepping over outstretched legs, discarded paper plates and half-empty chip bags. I stood up. Freak appeared behind him, her first appearance in days.

  ‘Ade, please don’t,’ she said.

  He towered over me, forcing me to lean back until I fell over the crate I’d been sitting on.

  Somebody else said, ‘Ade.’

  I scrabbled backwards but he was bearing down on me. Not so scrawny and pathetic now. His neck bulged with angry veins. His jaw was clenched, teeth bare, his eyes alive with a fury I hadn’t thought he was capable of. Over his shoulder, Brandon and Lloyd were standing up in slow-motion. I opened my mouth to speak but before anything came out Ade was lifting me with both hands, yelling, spitting in my face. Afterwards, they said it was like your favorite puppy going rabid. When I hit the wall, the bricks crumbled in sympathy.

  In the end, only Marjorie had the strength to pull him off me. I was flat on my back, staring at the sky, blinded by a strange combination of sun and stars. For a moment I was sitting on the sofa with Jojo watching Jerry smash Tom over the head with a mallet, except the birds I was hearing were in the trees above me and not in an eight-inch TV screen. Through the birdsong, I heard Freak crying and then a shadow fell in front of my eyes, making everything dark.

  The light came back gradually. When I opened my eyes, Freak was there.

  ‘Hey, she’s awake.’

  I tried to look in the direction of her voice, but I was stiff as a board. Seemed like I’d forgotten how to work my body. In actual fact, my body wasn’t working.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ a lower voice, and then Marjorie was looking down at me, her face slack with gravity. They both stared like I was some strange creature bobbing up from the deep. I tried to speak but my voice caught in my throat, and my eyes watered with the effort.

  ‘Here, try this.’ Marjorie slid a straw between my lips and I sipped. Strawberry milk. It surprised me with its tang. I screwed my face up.

  ‘She don’t like it,’ said Freak. ‘I told you it was too much.’ Freak stroked my forehead. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

  ‘Screw water,’ said Marjorie. ‘She needs sugar to get her energy up. And calcium for her bones. And milk for the fat, skinny lil’ runt that she is. Trust me. Whenever I got sick, my ma always gave me strawberry milk and I turned out just fine, didn’t I?’

  I didn’t hear Freak’s response.

  I don’t know how long it was, hours, days, weeks, but Marjorie and Freak stayed with me. They’d ‘borrowed’ a fan from one of our neighbours and kept it pointed right at the foot of the bed. When I could finally talk, the first thing I asked was could they turn the damn fan off. My feet were cold enough for frostbite. Second thing I asked for was a pair of socks. Third thing – what the hell happened to me?

  A look passed between Freak and Marjorie and then Freak slipped out of my eye line. Marjorie leaned over and whispered, ‘Just a misunderstanding, Aggie. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.’

  She patted the pillow around my head and gave me more strawberry milk, which I spit out. ‘Oh, Aggie,’ tutted Marjorie, wiping the milk from my chin and reaching into my neckline to catch the rest.

  ‘No more strawberry milk, please,’ I gasped, my voice croaky through lack of use. Marjorie looked hurt. Was the first time I’d seen her look anything other than angry.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Marjorie,’ I said. ‘Seems like you’ve ruined strawberry milk for me forever. Can’t I get some frikkin water? Please?’

  Freak was there in an instant. The look of triumph in her eye as she shouldered Marjorie out the way told me wh
atever peace they’d brokered was uneasy. Standing between us, she poured water from a bottle into a cup.

  I didn’t recognize the room, or the bed I was in.

  ‘That’s because it’s mine,’ Marjorie said, in a tone suggesting I’d better drink all the strawberry milk she could offer me, but she didn’t say anything about the water Freak tipped into my mouth, except to tell her to go more slowly, which I was grateful for. The water washed away the sour tang of the milk and woke my head up a little. I shifted my position in the bed. Marjorie had to help me as my left hand was wrapped in a white bandage. My whole body thrummed tender but at least now I could move it a little bit. I asked again what had happened.

  Marjorie adjusted another bandage that I’d been unaware was around my head. ‘It wouldn’t have been so bad except you hit your head on the way down. Wasn’t just you, you know. You killed a fucking plant pot.’

  Her face was straight but there was a smile behind it. Freak missed it.

  ‘Screw the fucking plant pot,’ she frowned. ‘Ade’s real sorry, Aggie. I feel awful. It was all my fault. I showed him the flower you did and he got it backwards. I tried to stop him. He knows he did wrong.’

  ‘Damn right he did wrong, hitting a woman like that.’ Marjorie’s face was rigid. ‘He’ll be in here begging your forgiveness, Aggie. Don’t give it away too easy, okay?’

  Felt like a vice was tight around my head. I struggled to make sense of what they were talking about. Freak turned round and lifted her shirt.

  ‘Looks good, huh?’

  Her back was running with blood. I blinked hard and looked again but she’d dropped her shirt back down.

  ‘I told him I made you do it,’ she said.

  Marjorie pulled up the sleeve on my right arm. ‘And these? Who made you do these?’ she wanted to know. I looked at the dozens of tiny cuts in my skin, and some longer slashes, and felt like I was looking at a stranger’s arm. Apart from one little cut, Freak had made them all.

  ‘You girls are a couple of frikkin nuts.’ Marjorie shook her head as she applied some lotion or other to cuts that were made too long ago to heal. She rubbed it in gently, far more gently than I would have thought possible. Such a big woman, and delicate fingers. When she finished, she looked at me and pulled her lips in such a way that made me think she must be smiling. ‘We’re gonna get you better now,’ she said. ‘Even if you do turn your nose up at strawberry milk.’ She turned to Freak. ‘Don’t go tiring her out, y’hear?’ And then she left, promising to return in a while.

  ‘What’s happened to the real Beast Woman?’ I whispered.

  ‘Who gives a shit?’ Freak said, sitting down at my right-hand side. ‘Anyway, I can’t stay long. I promised to help Ade with something. You should see him, Aggie. He’s all over me since he saw what you did to my back.’

  ‘You asked me to do it.’

  ‘I know I did. You shouldn’t feel bad about it, Aggie. Ade’s gonna take care of me from now on. It made him see, you know?’

  ‘Can you pass the water?’

  ‘I been sleeping in his room and everything.’ She passed the cup over and it sloshed down my chest. She didn’t notice. ‘This whole thing, I don’t know, it’s opened something up between us. Like maybe it was a good thing. I mean, I’m sorry you had to get caught in the crossfire, though. I never had a guy do anything like that for me before.’

  ‘Your back,’ I said. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘It’s kind of hot but it don’t hurt. Not really.’

  She turned round and lifted her shirt again. When I looked this time, there was no blood. Just the rough outline of a shaky, unidentifiable flower, and the bumped ridges where the cuts had healed. It was grotesque, some kind of evil pretending to be beautiful. I felt like I’d played a sick joke on us both, but Freak stood admiring herself in the mirror.

  ‘It feels a little tight right now but that’ll change,’ she said, never taking her eyes off it. ‘I’m going to get some color in it. Marjorie told me all about this great tattoo place.’

  I was embarrassed by the wrongness of it, and angry she didn’t feel the same way.

  ‘Since when’s Marjorie your best friend?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, she aint. I promise. But I’ve seen a different side to her lately. Since she cottoned on to…’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘It all came out after Ade attacked you.’ Her eyes went as dark as her face burned red. ‘I told them everything. I had to.’

  I remembered what she’d told me about going down alleyways and letting guys do what they wanted. If she’d told them that, what had she told them about me?

  ‘Nothing, Aggie. I promise.’

  ‘You best not have.’

  She shook her head. ‘It aint my story to tell.’

  ‘Aint having people think I’m some kind of slut.’

  She flushed then, and immediately I hated myself. Stupid dumb bitch.

  ‘Can you help me sit up?’ I said, embarrassed.

  Together, slowly, we arranged the pillows higher behind me and I was able to take a look around.

  ‘You want the curtain open?’ Freak asked.

  The curtain was actually a sheet. Someone – Marjorie, I guess – had made a loop and stitched it so it could slide on a pole. Light spilled into the room and I saw it properly for the first time. Like Ade’s, this looked almost like a normal bedroom. As far as homeless people go, Ade and Marjorie were frikkin millionaires. A wooden wardrobe nestled in one corner, a padlock and chain looped through its handles. I realized now I was in a genuine bed, with real pillows. I had a clean sheet covering me and a crazy colored eiderdown folded neat at the bottom of the bed. In another corner was a desk, and behind it a shelving unit, and leaning on the shelving unit, a row of Jesus crosses all standing up in a row.

  ‘What the fuck are they?’ I asked. Freak laughed and took one down to show me.

  ‘Marjorie makes them,’ she said. ‘They’re pretty cool.’

  I took the cross in my hand, unconvinced of its coolness.

  ‘She makes them out of strips of rubber tire left on the roads after a blow-out. She goes out to collect the rubber and then makes stuff to sell in gift shops,’ Freak told me.

  ‘People buy this shit? All this time I’m hustling for cash all I had to do was collect old tires and make stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s got them in shops all over, so she says. I love these. Look.’

  I rested the cross in my lap as she passed over a tiny, perfectly proportioned, rubber armadillo. I had to admit it was pretty good.

  ‘Marjorie’s a big fan of the armadillo. Says she finds their slaughter on the roads of Texas difficult to process. Her words, not mine,’ Freak said, as she saw the look on my face. ‘She says this is her way of showing respect. There’s dozens and dozens of them here. You’ll see when you can get out of bed.’

  ‘Who buys it?’ I asked. Freak wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Tourists, I think. Tourists and truckers. Truckers are hot for the crosses. They hang them from their mirror. They don’t care for the armadillos so much, in real life or in art, Marjorie says.’

  Remembering the number of squished armadillo lumps I’d seen lying by the side of the roads, I agreed she had a point.

  I turned the armadillo over in my hand. The way it was built, tiny nails holding layers of rubber together, I had to admit it was kind of clever. No way my fingers could have made anything like it. I took another look at the cross. You could tell it was tire rubber, a few layers put together, and the ends cut into points. At the center of the cross Marjorie had stuck an amber-colored stone. Seemed like maybe I had seen one of these before, dangling between me and some guy before I stung him, but I wasn’t sure if I was making it up. Inventing memories. Maybe I’d been accused of that before.

  ‘What you two doing?’ Marjorie came in without knocking, but then again, it was her room. Before either of us could answer she was over in a flash, grabbing the cross and armadillo and putting them back where Freak had found
them.

  ‘We were just looking, Marjorie. Aggie was asking.’

  ‘I don’t want you touching them, y’hear?’

  The new knowledge about her artistic side didn’t make Marjorie any less scary.

  ‘That there’s my livelihood,’ she continued. ‘Now you respect that and leave them alone, alright? Otherwise, I’ll have my bed back.’

  ‘I won’t touch them, Marjorie. I promise. And thanks for your bed. Hopefully I won’t need it too much longer,’ I said. ‘Where you sleeping?’

  ‘Our room,’ Freak replied. ‘I’ve been in here with you. Most nights, that is.’ She smiled slyly and nodded at a space on the floor where her sleeping bag lay in a crumpled heap. ‘Anyways, I gotta go. Ade needs me.’

  She kissed me lightly on the forehead, and waggled her fingers at Marjorie as she skipped out. We heard Ade’s room door creak open and then close across the hall.

  ‘You’re in here until you’re fit and then I’ll be taking my room back,’ Marjorie said, as though there could be any doubt about that.

  It would only be another day or two before I was ready to get out of bed, though I was in no hurry. Marjorie had her room decked out real nice. Little paintings hung on the walls, and she let incense burn if I asked her. I lay in bed watching the smoke coil lazily upwards, drifting in the light reflected by a chain of colored glass dolphins hanging in the window. When I expressed surprise at Marjorie making such a nice space for herself, Freak just shrugged and said she didn’t find it too fancy, though I did notice her on more than one occasion stroking the giant blue-and-green peacock feathers sticking out of a vase on the floor.

  I wasn’t too keen on seeing Ade but I was in no position to walk away from him when he finally decided to visit. He stood in the open doorway and knocked on the wall to get my attention. ‘Hello, Aggie,’ he said, in that stupid voice of his.

  ‘Hey, Ade,’ I replied.

  Silence.