Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

The baby-sitter took a drag on her cigarette and passed it to her boyfriend. “Valerie? That little girl with hair like yours? No.”

“She’s my sister.”

“So?” said the boyfriend around the smoke. “You lose your sister, that’s your problem, not ours.”

The baby-sitter shrugged like she agreed with the boyfriend. Mistie spun on her toe and looked at all four corners of the playground. Amid the few other children, there was no Valerie.

Then she saw the open gate. The garbage man had come for the trash, but had left the chain-link gate wide open. Mistie ran for the gate, laced her fingers through the wire and stared at the lot where the Dumpsters and the cars were parked. “Valerie!” she called. “You get yourself back here or we’re gonna get a whippin’!”

Valerie didn’t jump up, laughing, from behind a car. She didn’t peer, grinning and giggling, from behind a Dumpster. Mistie went out in the lot, her heart pounding now so hard she could hear it in her ears and feel it in her neck. The lot was hot, still steaming from the afternoon sun; starlings pecked at the dust and squawked at each other.

“Valerie, damn it, come here!” Mistie used her Daddy’s word. Daddy could get Valerie to behave when nobody else could. But Valerie didn’t come.

Mistie walked across the lot to the grassy embankment. The train had gone on, leaving only its echo. Mistie grabbed hold of brittle bank-side chicory and pulled herself to the track. “Valerie!” She was sweating, and her hair was flat against her neck, but under her skin she felt a quick, passing chill, like the ones she got the moment she hopped out of her evening bath.

Up the line there was a curve where the track rounded to the right behind a five-story cold storage building. Down the line it ran straight for a pretty long ways between rows of other apartment buildings toward the center of the city. Mistie walked up the center of the track, trying to pace her steps with the awkwardly-spaced wooden slats. She’d never seen things from this vantage point before; the playground seemed smaller, its grass more spotty and brown. At the bottom of the other side of the embankment, a stream trickled over rocks and broken glass. There were small houses on that side, each with their own fenced yards, clotheslines, doghouses.

“Valerie!”

Mistie held her arms out for balance and walked toward the curve in the track. Mama was not just going to spank them, she was going to take away T.V. for a long time, and Daddy was going to yell really loud and maybe jerk Mistie’s hair like he did before. Maybe Daddy would call the police to come put the two girls in jail. Daddy said police did that to bad little girls who didn’t do what they were told. Mistie’s eyes welled up at the thought of jail.

She heard a child giggle, and she stopped in her tracks to look down in the direction of the sound. It was a little boy in his backyard, teasing his puppy with a stick. Mistie said, “Shut up!” to the boy.

“You shut up!” called the boy.

Rounding the curve, Mistie could see the track stretching straight again, reaching out to the end of the city. The embankment was taller here, sloping sharply a good twenty-five feet, and covered with gravel instead of grass. The rear lot of the cold storage building was littered with cans and papers and what looked like little balloons. Rusted trash barrels stood upright and lay on their sides. The building’s windows were cracked and some were missing the glass entirely. A pile of old clothes lay against one of the upright barrels near the foot of the embankment.

Mistie lost her footing on the slats and stumbled, then caught herself before slipping on the edge of the embankment. She wiped her nose then sneezed in a sudden whirlwind of dust. “Valerie! Mama’s gonna be so mad! Where are you?”

She walked a few more yards down the track and stopped. She turned about, hands on hips, staring down both sides of the embankment. The little boy was still playing with his puppy.

“Hey!” yelled Mistie. “You see a little girl?”

“No!” called the boy. “And I said shut up!”

Mistie looked down at the trash barrels in the back lot of the cold storage building. Maybe Valerie was hiding inside one of the ones that was lying on its side. Back in the apartment, Valerie was always getting into the lower cabinets when Mama left them unlatched. Sitting on her butt, Mistie slid down the gravel with her hands pressed into the gravel so she would slide too fast. Her palms were cut on jagged pieces of the rock, and at the bottom she paused to spit on them and wipe the off. There were little bits of skin peeled up and little red lines of blood. It hurt, but not as bad as the whipping if she couldn’t find Valerie. Her shorts were traced in oil and tar.

“Valerie!” Her voice was wobbly now. She knew she was going to cry and didn’t want to. What she wanted was for her bratty baby sister to quit being a baby and hiding when she knew it was time to be home.

Mistie squatted down and peered inside one of the rusted barrels. There was nothing in there but spiders’ webs and a rat’s nest. She looked in another and found the same. “Yuck!” she said, shivering. She hated spiders.

She looked at the pile of old discarded clothes over by one of the upright barrels. Who would leave their clothes here? Daddy said some boys and girls did a dirty thing where people couldn’t see them. The dirty thing meant they took off their clothes. Maybe boys and girls took off their clothes here. But they would get spiders on them, Mistie thought. And the people on the train could look down and see them.

She walked over, her feet slowing as she got closer, because something was odd, something was wrong. Something was familiar.

There were jeans, yes, big old jeans from some man maybe, and a torn blouse and boys’ underpants. There was a blanket that was crusted with months’ worth of dried, dirty rain. And there was something else, lumped up, twisted and crumpled, a white shirt drenched in red; a pair of blue shorts.

Mistie began to breathe through her mouth, short, puffy breaths that hurt her throat and her lungs. She couldn’t blink. Her arms stung with dread.

Ah, no no….

She stopped at the pile and knelt. She touched the back of the tee-shirt and found there to be a body within, and the body was warm. She reached over for the little arms that protruded from the sleeves, and rolled the body over. Legs flopped like little rubber dog toys, and one of the sandals was gone from the foot. The arms and legs were raked with scratches.

Mistie stared. The air around her went dark and poisonous. She put her hands to her mouth, trying to cry, trying to speak, trying to shout to Valerie to get up get up now quit playing this stupid game with me!

Valerie wasn’t getting up. Her head was gone.

Mistie found the head in some brush near the embankment. The eyes were open; the neck was ripped and ragged. Mistie cradled it in her arm and crawled back up to the tracks. She took it home, hoping Mama could fix it. Mama could put it back. Mama could make it right. And that Mama wouldn’t spank too very hard.

Kate threw the ax as hard as she could across the barn, where it struck the wheelbarrow, turned it over, and skidded into oblivion in the far side shadows. She stared at what was before her, ebbing and flowing in the simmering light from the wood blocks.

The girl. The severed cat head. The screaming child covered in cat’s blood.

Kate’s fingers were locked in place, paralyzed into position as if around the handle of a demonic ax. Her body was coated in sweat, dream sweat, waking sweat.

She took a step forward, and the girl clutched the child more tightly. The child held the cat’s head to her as if it were the grail of God.