Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

Sweat sprang out on Kate’s neck and she shrugged against it.

“Okay?” asked Mary Jane. “You look a bit woozy.” She popped open a plastic bag with a flick of her wrist and put the Pepsis in first.

Kate nodded. “I’m fine.” She could feel the kids…how many were there? Three? Twenty?…walking around the store, poking through the shelved items.

Pay and get out. Keep your head low. They won’t see you, they won’t notice you. You’re the last thing they care about. These are just kids. They aren’t interested in adults, they’re interested in themselves. They’re having some sort of initiation and couldn’t care less about anyone else.

The rest of the items were plopped into the bag, bread on top, amazingly enough since Mary Jane had her attention focused on the kids in the store.

“How much?” Kate prodded.

“Ah,” said Mary Jane. She glanced at the register. “Eleven twenty-three.”

Damn . Kate fumbled for her wallet, her fingers digging past checkbook, lipstick, compact, address book. She found it, flicked open the change compartment and clawed out five quarters. She slammed them down beside the ten. “Keep the change.”

“Oh, well, two cents, thanks,” said Mary Jane. She tried to smile to show Kate she was joking. Kate tried to smile back. She snatched the bag and worked her way down the center aisle, watching her dry shoe and wet shoe. One of the kids stepped around the end of the aisle in front of the door, and Kate glanced up so she wouldn’t run into him.

Her.

It was a girl, she thought, someone who looked slightly familiar through the red stripes. This girl was about fifteen, thin, hard-looking, with short black hair and old, baggy men’s clothing. No coat. Her eyes were shaded beneath a flattened fedora, but even in the shadow they seemed to boil with hate.

And then Kate was past the girl and out the door. The bell overhead tingled.

It was still sleeting, steady and thick. Kate lost her balance on the slick stoop. The bag jerked and ripped, and the Pepsis and deviled ham dropped to the icy gravel.

Tony fingered the pistol in her pocket, the only piece in the store with bullets, and tasted expectation on her tongue. The scrawny woman who had been buying stuff had just gone outside, the door slapping shut behind her, but that didn’t matter, Tony didn’t need anybody more than Mrs. Martin in the store. This show was for her, even if she’d never know it.

Yesterday afternoon when Tony had come in the Exxon with her mother to buy beer, Mrs. Martin had been talking on the phone and scratching herself a strip of “Holiday Hurrah!” lottery tickets on the counter. She scratched and rubbed, flicking off the little crumbs of waxy ticket residue as she went. Tony’s mom had said Tony could pick out a snack. Tony selected a Little Debbie oatmeal single. She and her mom went to the counter, then Mam said, “Forgot the Frosted Flakes.”

Mam had gone back for the cereal. Tony had stood at the counter, one hand on the box of oatmeal cakes, one hand on top of the case of beer.

Mrs. Martin had put the receiver down on the counter and she’d jerked the beer out from under Tony, snarling, “You ain’t old enough to buy beer, little girl!”

Little girl. There were few words that stung Tony like those two words.

It was all she could do to clench her fists and not drive one down the old woman’s throat.

Little girl!

She grabbed the beer back, letting one set of fingers scrape the woman’s forearm as she did. The woman squawked and reached for Tony, who skipped back several feet, still clutching the beer.

“Don’t you never grab nothing from me, little girl!” said Mrs. Martin.

Oh, just you wait, bitch, Tony thought.

Then Mam had come up with the Frosted Flakes and a carton of vanilla ice cream and the confrontation ended. Mrs. Martin hung up the phone and rung up Mam’s total.

This is for you, Mrs. Martin, Tony thought as she put her hands on her hips and strode forward through the center of the store. Little Joe and Leroy were making their way up the left aisle, joking with each other and playing with packages of disposable diapers and cans of motor oil on the shelves, clearly unsure of what they were supposed to do but ready for the word. Whitey, who thought he had a fine-ass revolver at his beck and call was moving up the right aisle, humming something that sounded a little like “Turkey in the Straw.” Knowing Whitey, it could be the kids’ song or maybe it was some gospel thing. Whitey’s mom sang in a gospel ground, and Whitey, when he wasn’t spending evenings with the Hot Heads, sometimes went along as a backup tenor.

Mrs. Martin stood at the front counter, her elbows planted against the counter, her eyebrows pinched in a prissy, pencil-drawn line. She was wearing a festive Santa pin with a string to pull to light up the eyes.

“You kids got money?” Her voice was higher than usual, betraying genuine, growing concern. “Got no money you best get your behinds out of here ‘cause I ain’t puttin’ up with no nonsense!”

“Mmm, doughnut sticks,” said Whitey from the other side of the store. There was the sound of crinkley plastic wrap being collected and thrust into pockets.

“Answer me!” demanded Mrs. Martin. “I’ll call the police, don’t think I won’t! You’re nothing but trouble, you’ve shoplifted from here before and I won’t take it anymore!”

Tony reached the counter. The woman’s eyes widened and she stepped back, but not far enough. Tony smiled, shrugged, then grabbed the front of Mrs. Martin’s sweater and yanked her forward over the counter. She pressed the mouth of the pistol to the Exxon nametag. “Hey little girl,” she laughed loudly. “How’s it hangin’? Oh, it ain’t is it? You’re just a fucking pussy!”

The Hot Heads took the laughter as the sign. Leroy pulled out his bb gun and waved it in the air, then began slugging jars from the shelves with the butt end. The jars burst on the tile floor. “This is a stick-up! This is a stick-up!” crowed Little Joe, and he did a karate-like kick and sent a small display of videos-to-rent flying like geese out of a pond. Whitey ripped open a box of trash bags and yanked one out. He began shoveling goods into it — paper cups, bottles of aspirin, boxes of Hostess cupcakes, cans of Spam, some die-cast John Deere toy tractors.

Mrs. Martin stared, gog-eyed, her pointy eyebrows twitching. Tony licked her lips and tasted the fear steaming off the woman. “Open the cash register,” Tony said. “I want everything in there.”

“I can’t,” whispered Mrs. Martin. “It locks at four o’clock and….”

Tony leaned over and bit the woman’s cheek. The skin split and Tony could taste the hot blood. The woman wailed and tried to jerk free. “You’re lying,” Tony said through the flesh. “You are, aren’t you?”

Mrs. Martin sputtered, “Yes.” Tony opened her mouth straightened, the gun never wavering from Mary Jane’s little tag of identification. Keeping the rest of her body perfectly still, the woman reached over with one hand and punched keys; the register opened with a “ding.”

“Get it all out, and no pennies,” said Tony. “Put it in a bag. Don’t get a freakin’ bag with holes. Half the bags here got holes in ‘em.”

Mrs. Martin was trembling so badly she had to dip her hand in three times before she could come up with the bills. Her cheek was a welt of teeth-marks and blood. It seemed to be swelling nicely. Tony waited, smiling. Behind her, the racket was increasing. Whitey was indeed singing “Turkey in the Straw” at the top of his lungs. Little Joe had moved from cowboy yodels to Indian whoops. Glass shattered. There was a loud thumping, and Tony guessed it to be the ATM machine being whacked off the wall.