Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

And for the first time on the entire, nightmarish trip, the little girl screamed.

She remembered.

There was a train track running behind the brick apartment building they lived in when they were in Kentucky. It passed behind the apartment’s playground, separated from the children by a tall, chain link fence and a steep embankment. The train didn’t come by often, several times a week, and it was a slow-moving thing most of the time. Once, when Mistie had been in the playground with Mama and Valerie, Mama had watched the train go by and said, “That thing moves like a old man who crapped his drawers!” She’d laughed. Mistie, who had been five at the time, had laughed. Little Valerie, who was two and a half, had giggled shrill and loud.

There were a lot of children at the apartment building, three stories’ worth of them, and in the summer time the playground was crawling with them because nobody had air-conditioning in their apartments. Mistie didn’t remember the names of any of the children who were there, but she remembered the faces, dark and light, chubby and thin, smiling and somber. Every morning of the summer they were there, clustering on the sliding board and cluttered atop the spin-around like Japanese beetles on a rose. They played in the baking-hot sandbox and threw balls at each other until someone finally cried and the mothers told them to be good or they’d have to go inside.

Nobody had any money, much. The mothers and older sisters who sat in the shade of the single tree in the playground were always saying something like that to each other.

“Wish I could get a new car. Not a new one, but a different one. Got a busted transmission in mine and I can’t afford a cab to work.”

“School’s comin’ up next month. You ever see a kid with bigger feet than Justin’s? Bought him new shoes in June and now he’s needin’ ‘em again for school.”

“Randolphs got a window air unit. Gonna run their ‘lectric bill up but damn, I wish it was me!”

“Me, too, sister, me, too.”

And on it went.

It was mid-August, and after suppertime. Some of the kids had come back down to play while others were settled in their living rooms in front of their televisions. From the playground the blue glows of the sets were visible through the open windows.

Mistie’s Mama was lying down on her bed because she just found out she was going to have another baby and wasn’t happy about it. She told Daddy she was going to get her tubes tied after this one was born. Mistie didn’t know what that meant but it sounded bad because Mama had said it through her teeth. Daddy was pissed off and went riding in their Buick. Mama sent Mistie and Valerie out the play on the playground for a while.

“You stay in there and don’t go no-wheres else,” said Mama from her bed. Mistie and Valerie were standing in the doorway to her bedroom, each holding a fruit roll-up left over from supper. “I can trust you to do what I say, can’t I, Mistie?”

Mistie nodded. “Yeah, Mama,” she said.

“When I call you out this window you come runnin’, you hear me? Anybody bother you, you come right back up here, you and Valerie, you hear me?”

“Yeah, Mama, okay.”

“Okay, then.” Mama smiled a little and said, “You’re my girls. Watch that slide now, you know how hot it gets in the sun. Burn the skin off the back of your legs you aren’t careful.”

“Okay, Mama.”

Mistie took Valerie by the hand and led her down to the first floor and then back through the hallway to the rear door of the building. Flies loved the back hall of the first floor because just outside the door was where the residents put their bags and cans of garbage when the Dumpsters where full. The Dumpsters were usually full.

Valerie giggled as several flies found her eyelashes.

“Hey, flies!” demanded Mistie. She flicked her hand at Valerie’s face, sending them in a whirl. Mama had spray she could put on the kids to keep the flies and bugs off, but she had forgotten, and Mistie knew it wasn’t time to go back and ask for it.

Outside, it wasn’t quite as hot as it had been in the afternoon. It was still light, and the sun was visible beyond the railroad track, sitting atop a distant warehouse like a cat on a fence post.

Mistie put Valerie on the spin-around and pushed it slowly in a circle. Valerie giggled and tried to stand up, but flopped over and laughed again. Then Mistie pushed off and jumped aboard, and the sisters went round and round, looking up at the clouds, watching them spin, too.

The garbage truck came up beside the playground with a hiss and a sound of scraping metal. Some of the little boys stopped to watch, but Mistie only looked at it, then back at Valerie, who was heading for the sliding board.

“Hot, Valerie!” Mistie warned. “Don’t burn your legs!”

The garbage truck’s steel arms lifted the three Dumpsters in turn, the contents dropping into the huge maw on its back. Then the driver climbed out and opened the gate to the playground and strode to the back door where the extra bags and cans were strewn. He complained loud enough for everyone to hear, though it didn’t seem like anyone cared much.

“Put the trash where it belongs next time! I don’t get paid extra to lug this stinking crap to my truck!”

One of the teenaged baby-sitters, under the tree with a boyfriend, said loud enough for the trash man to hear, “You come when you’re supposed to it wouldn’t get all overflowing like that!”

No more words were exchanged. The garbage truck wheezed and thumped, then drove away.

Mistie went to the sand box while Valerie sat on the bottom of the slide and tried to catch a fly. The sand box was fun, except when one of the stray cats of the neighborhood used it as a litter box. Mistie found a cracked plastic shovel and she began to make a castle. The sand at the top was dry and didn’t stick together, but the sand underneath was damp from old rains and stuck together really good. Mistie dug up the wet sand and used her hands to claw all around to make the castle moat. She’d seen a T.V. show where a queen lived in a castle and the castle had a moat around it, full of snakes and snapping turtles and other things with teeth. It was a funny show, a cartoon, and the prince was so clumsy he kept falling into the moat and the queen kept pulling him out with her silk curtains. After the moat, Mistie formed the castle. A bucket would have been good to use, one little girl who played in the sand box a lot had a bucket but she’d taken it in. Mistie had to use her hands. But patiently she scooped and patted, pausing on occasion to pick a stone from outside the sand box to decorate the walls. Some dandelions grew in a grassy path by the sandbox; Mistie popped off the yellow blossoms and covered the top of the castle with them. She sat back on her heels and smiled.

“Valerie, look!” she said, turning toward the slide.

Valerie was not on the bottom of the slide. Mistie hopped to her feet, brushed sand off her knees and her bottom, and glanced around. She didn’t see Valerie.

“Valerie?”

She trotted over to the slide and looked at the ladder, but her sister wasn’t there, neither was she sitting in the shade beneath the slide.

Mistie stomped her foot. “Valerie, quit hiding from me!”

Up the bank behind the playground, a lazy freight train ambled by, clacking and clicking. Mistie called over the noise to the baby-sitter under the tree.

“Have you seen Valerie?”

The baby-sitter waved her over, unable to hear over the noise. “What did you say?” said the girl, squinting in the sun. Her boyfriend had his arm around her waist.

Mistie felt funny now. Her mouth was dry and her chest felt like someone was jumping up and down on it. “Have you seen Valerie?”