Armadillos Read online

  How’s my girlie? Pop appeared from behind Jojo, sat down beside me and pulled me onto his lap. He put his hand to my forehead and it was so hot he made like he burned himself. I giggled, even as Jojo frowned.

  She aint well. Go easy.

  I will, he replied. I’ll go easy, won’t I, sugar pie? And he tickled me then, and made me squeal, despite my sore throat.

  Y’see? he laughed. She’s cured already. Its a goddam frikkin miracle!

  I wriggled to get away, but his hands were so big, it was like trying to get out of a locked gate once Pop had you on his knee. His fingers squeezed my waist and dug into my armpits and I bounced myself hard as I could to escape him. Finally he let me go. I tumbled onto the sofa, then jumped right back on his lap and wrapped my arms around him. His overalls were unbuttoned and he smelled of sweat and tobacco and work.

  Aggie, get down, Jojo said. She stood back from us, medicine bottle in one hand, jelly jar in the other. You’re too big for that now.

  Like hell she is, said Pop, giving me an extra squeeze. I clung to him, defiantly rubbing my head on his chin.

  She bent to pick up the little plastic spoon, and when she stood again, she gave me a look you couldn’t argue with. Well, seeing as you’re so cock-a-whoop, young lady, maybe you could see your way to giving me a hand in the kitchen.

  Pop let loose his grip on me. Ah, hell, he said, the child’s sick, Jojo. I’ll leave her be. If I’d known you’d get yourself so aggravated about a little horse-play. We was just fooling, aint that right, Aggie?

  He pushed me down, arranged a cushion behind my back, and pulled the sheet over me, leaving grubby finger marks on the graying cotton.

  Happy now? he asked Jojo, as he stepped away. His boot twisted on Momma’s book as he left, leaving pages fanning out from the mangled cover.

  Jojo gasped and bent to snatch it up. To my horror, it fell apart in her hands. Pages swooped to the floor and scattered at her feet.

  Why did you leave it there, Aggie? Her voice whiny and accusing.

  You said I could read it, I croaked.

  Well, I was a fool that time, she said, and followed Pop out. I followed her journey as her footsteps stomped up the stairs.

  I’m sorry, Jojo, I called after her. The roughness in my throat made my eyes water. I heard her yelling at Pop, and sitting in the dark, pummelled by rain, it struck me now that maybe she was the reason he’d driven us out here.

  Least your skin’s waterproof, Aggie. Gotta look on the bright side.

  Another lesson I learned from Jojo. Look on the bright side, sure. But don’t make it so bright the dazzle blinds you from the truth.

  Tony’s manager hadn’t left him with hire-and-fire privileges, so he had to pay me out of his own pocket, which he did nightly. He was apologetic about it but of course it suited me right down to the ground. Amy had been right about the pizza. It was amazing. I ate so much in the first three days I had to track down some Ex-Lax to loosen me up, but after I learned that lesson, I was happy as a pig in shit.

  I spent the nights in a nearby park, climbing the fence after dark. It wasn’t what you’d call comfortable, but it was quiet, and felt safe. I slept in an empty water fountain and passed the time counting bats. When I was done with that, I counted the bills in my pocket. They were stacking up. I’d be able to get a room some time soon, and then I’d relax. When you’ve got your own four walls around you, you can be a real person. Maybe I’d send for Jojo, show her she didn’t have to put up with that shit anymore. Maybe she could be a real person too. I gave myself a shake. It wasn’t the time to get wrapped up in fairy stories. In the morning, I’d stash my bag in the bushes and wander the streets until it was time for work.

  Lori and Amy came by the pizza place a couple of times to see how I was doing, but they didn’t invite me to hang out with them. I hadn’t known I could be offended and grateful all at the same time, but maybe they were put off by the fact of their T-shirt on my body beneath my pizza apron.

  Anyway, College Station was my town. I’d no doubt I’d finally found my home. It was bigger than I’d first thought, yet everywhere I went I saw my name. Aggie was what the university kids called themselves. Frikkin weirdos. I’d have picked a cuter name if I were them, but I understood why Amy and Lori had taken me as their mascot. Aggie bookshops, Aggie coffee shops, Aggie T-shirts in every third window. I went into shops that sold Aggie dishcloths, Aggie golf tees, Aggie frikkin snow globes and Aggie Christmas baubles. It was like looking in a mirror and having the world shout your name back at you.

  What bowled me over most was the huge water tower. It stretched a hundred feet to the sky and it welcomed the whole wide world to Aggieland. I spent hours just staring at it, fascinated by my own name, while the college kids walked, ran, learned, loved and lost, all day every day around me.

  It was night, I was in my dried-up fountain, and something had woken me up.

  ‘Miss? Are you alright in there?’

  A white beam swung down onto me and a hand clasped my shoulder. I knocked it off and scrambled away.

  ‘It’s alright, miss. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  The beam of light swung away from me and onto the face of the person carrying it. Actually, there were two of them, both guys, both looking a lot like students. The one without the flashlight held his hands up to show he didn’t mean any harm. He’d have to forgive me if I didn’t believe him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I said, wondering which way to escape to. They were between me and the park gate, which was probably locked anyway. I’d head for the trees behind me.

  ‘We just wanted to check you’re okay,’ said the one with the light.

  ‘Yeah, I was until you woke me up. What you do that for?’

  ‘I’m Mike,’ said the one with the light.

  ‘And I’m Dan,’ said the other. ‘We’re with the Christian Fellowship. Just wondering if we can help?’ He offered me a flyer with a picture of five men standing up to their waists in water with a fishing net spread wide in front of them. What were they hoping to catch?

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I shook my head and backed away from them.

  ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ said Dan. ‘No pressure. I’ll just leave this for you to check out later.’ He held the flyer out like it was a bomb about to explode and laid it carefully down in the fountain, the whole time holding his other hand in the air so I could see what he was doing. Then they both took a step backwards and the amount of relief that one step brought me almost removed the need for Ex-Lax.

  ‘I’ll read it in the morning,’ I said.

  ‘We’re here to help. We can give you shelter, help you get back on your feet. We’re almost full every night, but if you get there early enough we’ll see what we can do,’ Mike said.

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘So you’ll come then? The details are all on there,’ said Dan.

  I nodded, keen for them to go. When they still didn’t move, I leaned over and picked up the leaflet. ‘I’ll check it out,’ I said, waving it as though they were chickens who could be easily chased.

  ‘We’ve room for all God’s children,’ said Mike. ‘You are very special. You are loved.’

  ‘Yuh-huh. Um, thanks.’

  ‘All you have to do is let Him in. God’s grace will deliver you.’

  And with that, they were gone, or at least I couldn’t see them anymore. I gathered my stuff and went to look for a good bench, Dan’s words ringing in my head: God’s grace will deliver you.

  I chose a wooden bench to sleep on. I spread my blanket and lay down, once more using my bag as a pillow. I listened to the bats rushing through the trees and turned my head in case I could spy them in the moonlight. I spent a long while watching them dance around the thick steeple of a nearby church. Together, they climbed the night and disappeared into darkness. Alone, I discovered I’d been concentrating on the bats so much, the idea of whispering a prayer had slipped into my mind, settled and festered.

&
nbsp; I’d no memory of ever being in God’s house. Momma used to take us weekly, but once she’d gone, Pop put a stop to it. We didn’t need busybodies poking their noses in. We’d be good Christians under Pop’s instruction.

  When the mood took him, he’d gather his four children around the table and we’d take turns reading Scripture aloud. One Sunday, he passed me the Holy Book, my page marked by a dried flower taken from a vase upstairs.

  That’s for you, he said. Keep it.

  I began to read and everyone listened about the angels who came to Sodom, and Lot who protected them from an angry crowd, and Lot’s daughters who were given up to save the angels.

  That’s enough now, said Jojo.

  Pop slapped her across the back of the head for being so disrespectful and told me to read on.

  The eldest daughter said: Come, let us make him drunk with wine, and let us lie with him.

  I stumbled over the words. When I finally finished, the room was different, or maybe it was just the people. Jojo’s face was scarlet, just as her knuckles were white from the effort of pressing her hands together. It didn’t look like prayer. Ash had his head so low, he might have been asleep, but Cy was looking at me strange. Shifty, almost. Before I could put the pieces together, Pop placed his hands upon my head and offered a blessing.

  Lord God, look down kindly upon our family, and give particular care for our little Aggie, for she be a woman now.

  Hard to believe how much I flushed with pleasure.

  The day after Dan and Mike had offered me a place in God’s house, I was working alone. The place was dead, which was fine by me because I hadn’t slept much on that park bench. My eyes were stung with tiredness. It was Saturday afternoon and Tony was back playing football. The TV had been brought out in case customers wanted to watch but it sat there, screen blank. Every now and then I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in its darkness; an aproned girl with a white net hat was strange company.

  Every available surface was covered with tiny mounds of pizza toppings. I’d chopped every tomato, onion, mushroom and pepper I could find and discovered there weren’t enough containers to pack them in. I’d grated too much cheese and rolled more pizza bases than we’d ever need in a day. They were stacked in piles of a dozen. It occurred to me Tony might not be happy with my work today, which seemed unfair given I’d done so much of it. I took a trip over to the window and looked out. The streets were empty. Maybe I could catch a nap.

  I pushed four chairs together to make a bed and lay down. The park bench had been a better arrangement. A stack of free newspapers on the floor by the window caught my eye. One of them was called Missing. I’d resisted looking in it before but today I sat up and lifted a copy without even thinking about it.

  Inside were pages and pages of people who had disappeared. People who had other people looking for them. Idly, I scanned the pictures, imagining the stories behind each face. I thought mostly they’d be dead – suicide or murder most of them, maybe an accident or two – but surely there’d be one or two like me, somebody who just woke up one morning and decided to take a walk out of their life. That thought was crazy, that there were others like me, other subs who refused to take it anymore, subs who preferred to be a nobody instead of a useless, used somebody.

  A girl on page five caught my eye. Same age as me, long brown hair like me, dark eyes like me. Her name was Chanelle. Her mommy missed her. Mommy wanted her to call. Mommy just wanted to know she was alright. Mommy missed her so much. I flicked through to the end and then turned back to Chanelle; big lips, big doe eyes, big fucking deal.

  I took all the papers and placed them one by one in the pizza oven. I sipped a cherry lemonade while I watched all the people burn up. Then I took Dan and Mike’s church flyer out of my jeans pocket and watched that burn up, too. Bye, bye, Jesus.

  I headed out leaving the door unlocked behind me. The sun was high and the world was roasting. The water tower poked up through building roofs. Its huge burgundy letters, WELCOME TO AGGIELAND, seemed a little sinister today. Somehow it drew me, and I crossed the main road to the campus.

  The place was deserted. The big yellow buildings looked like a movie set. It was like I was seeing them for the first time. With no one around, I was brave enough to enter one of them. I ignored a sign forbidding me to walk on the grass, and crossed a patch of lawn between two roads. When I reached the building, a dark pane of glass slid silently to one side, inviting me to enter.

  The air con rushed me like an ambush, stealing the sweat from my body. Taking my first decent breath of the day, I stood for a minute just to absorb the grandness of the place, all marble floors and chandeliers. I trailed my hand along the cold wall as I made my way down the hallway.

  The reception desk was big and empty. A couple of brown parcels invited attention but not from me, not today. My heart lurched when I saw the next desk was security, but there was no guard, and I continued past the ladies restroom and past the elevator taking you up to the rest of the building. A Plexiglas map on the wall told you where everything was but I didn’t feel like I could stop, or maybe I just didn’t care to look. My shoes flip-flopped with every step. I passed a huge lounge with brown leather sofas, too big and plush to sit down on. More chandeliers dangled inside, not just one, several. Cy used to mock me and Jojo because we liked to read. He said education was a luxury. Now I knew what he meant.

  The next unit was a Starbucks and I went in just to feel normal. The girl behind the register didn’t even look up which was just the way I liked it. The coffee shop bled into a gift shop and I went through. Once again I was amazed by the amount of stuff in the world with my name on: Aggie pens, Aggie teddy bears, Aggie salad bowls, Aggie jewellery, notepads, pencil cases, hats, cups, corkscrews, wallets, all things everywhere singing Aggie, Aggie, Aggie. Aggie in all sizes. Aggie infants, Aggie toddlers, Aggie teens, Aggie women, Aggie men. And then a bookstore selling The History of the Aggies, Aggie Escapades, The Aggie Fightin’ Band, Aggie this, Aggie that, till all I could see, hear and breathe was my own name.

  ‘Howdy, miss. Anything I can help you with today?’ He was suddenly in my space, probably just a student trying to put himself through college, but in that moment, Satan couldn’t have rattled me more. He grinned. Saliva shone slick on his braces. At the corner of his mouth was a mole, just like Jojo’s.

  ‘I’m good, thanks,’ I said, slipping back out to the corridor, heart thumping. Down the hall, a security guard was talking on the phone. A pane of dark glass moved in front of me and I stepped back out into the day’s white glare. A single gull keened, swooping crazily in the windless sky. From a far off place, a train horn sounded.

  As I’d done once before, I looked left and right. Left would take me back to Tony’s. I went right, trying to ignore my name written all over the walls, when a roar ripped the air and I realized I was right outside the stadium. Behind that wall with my name on was eighty thousand people, and me, here, alone. I looked around me and blinked in surprise. I wasn’t too alone after all. Sleepy guys sat behind stalls selling banners and flags. Gig ’em, Aggies. Rows of tents lined up behind cars and trucks, with tables set out under white cloth, and on the cloth buckets of ice to keep bottles and bottles of beer cool. This place was about to go apeshit. I was tempted by an unattended car, but before I made it over I was distracted by a statue of a guy – they were always guys – and he was holding what I thought was a turtle but turned out to be a baseball cap. I stopped reading the inscription when I got to Aggie. It was the second damn word.

  The doors to the stadium burst open and the world was born. People spilled out, thousands of them, all dressed in burgundy looking like agitated fire ants. They swarmed around me, not even seeing me, waving giant flags and foam fingers and everywhere my name was ringing through the air: AGGIE, AGGIE, AGGIE.

  I shoved my way through the crowds and something grabbed my arm. I looked down and saw a hand wrapped around me. I followed its body to find a red-faced monster grinning like
a loon.

  ‘Aggie!’ it said. ‘It’s Mike! From last night. Remember me?’

  I dragged my arm free and pushed past him. Past a thousand others all yelling the same thing and ran, ran past the stadium, past the parking lots, ran until AGGIE was drowned out by the fearsome bells and horn of an approaching freight train. I didn’t make it over the track in time. The train penned me in with eighty thousand voices calling my name.

  I waited for it to pass; red carriages, black ones, green, yellow, blue, but it didn’t pass, would never pass, and behind me and inside me, AGGIE, AGGIE, AGGIE, and through the gaps in the carriages I could see the world I would never get to, and before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed the nearest handle and jumped.

  7

  It was night but the city didn’t know. All lit up and spread out like a magic carpet, it sparkled like jewels. Buildings stood so high, they blocked out the moon and made you think the sky was only above, not all around like it was at home. Not a star in sight. In the city, all the brightness is on the ground.

  The city stinks. It’s a place you can keep your skin clean but not your soul. It’s a hellhole, a maze of deceitfulness. I wound up staying longer than I wanted to just because I couldn’t find my damn way out again. People scurry like rats down sewers, home to office to malls to home again.

  I missed my Aggieland. I’d burned that bridge the day I walked. Shouldn’t have left the restaurant lying open, but at least I hadn’t cleared the register. I soon got to thinking I should have done.

  As a homeless person, there’s no dignity in the city. I got fresh clothes from a thrift outlet and then tried to find a job. At first, I was hopeful. I’d done it once, right? Figured the one advantage I had over others was I wasn’t fussy. Coming from where I came from, I’d do just about anything. I tried every restaurant’s back door, thinking sooner or later someone would let me wash their greasy dishes but no one ever did. I tried until I grew desperate and then I knew my chance had gone. Nobody likes the smell of desperation.