Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

“Don’t ever say that.”

“Why not?”

“Mothers are shit. My mother’s shit.”

“I bet you don’t even know your real mother.”

“I do. She lays on the sofa and whines.”

“You’ve made your gang you mother, haven’t you? A mother is supposed to give you comfort when you’re scared and is there when you’re lonely.”

“Mistie don’t have a real mom, either. Can you believe her Mama, letting her dad do to her what he’s done to her?”

“But whose fault is it? Her mother’s or her father’s, or maybe both?”

Tony ignored this. “My mother’s my gang, okay, then Mistie’s mother is the T.V. Who’s your mom, teacher?”

“I had a great mother.”

“She dead?”

“No.”

“You said had. So, who’s your mother now?”

Kate pondered this. It was a valid question. What gave her comfort, what helped her when she was lonely? “Being a McDolen in a place where I have no friends, I guess money, status. But I got bored with it, frustrated. Things got so wrong, but they weren’t as wrong as I thought they were. I was going to save myself with Mistie.”

“Fucked it up, huh?”

“Fucked it up.”

“Maybe you can stay at the ranch a while. Can you cook? I don’t know if Dad can cook, but maybe he can hire you for a while?”

“Maybe.”

Tony studied Kate. “Then where you gonna go?”

“I want to go home,” muttered Mistie.

“I thought I knew,” said Kate. “One step at a time. I have to get with Donnie. To talk.”

“I was a mother once,” said Tony.

Kate frowned, leaned forward over her knees. The movement stirred up the rancid stench in the straw, and she pinched her nose for a moment. “What?”

“I was a terrible mother. Last year I had two twins. Well, twins are always two, like Jody and Judy.”

“Tony, I had no idea.”

“Some boy from the high school did me.” The shoulders went up, down, as if it was something forgotten and now remembered in a haze. “Babies were born early, in my house. Mama chased Darlene away, and Jody and Judy, sent ‘em up the road for a while, said I had bad flu and they’d get it, too if they didn’t get the hell out of the house.”

“Tony….”

“Mama said it was my fault they came out so early ‘cause I drank beer and hung around with the Hot Heads. The Hot Heads didn’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t tell them. They made fun of me ‘cause I was getting fat, but I didn’t tell. The babies were dead inside me, or Mama killed ‘em, or maybe I did when I squeezed them out.” Another shrug. “I never want to be no Mama, not one or not like one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not. I fixed myself back in Mobile, I bet. Won’t have to worry ‘bout that anymore. Look, Lamesa!”

The truck had rumbled onto a well-lit area with a spattering of suburban businesses; restaurants, car dealerships, a K-Mart.

Tony was on her feet, bringing Mistie up with her. She slid open the side door. “As soon as he slows a little, we’re out of here. Don’t bust you damn leg open no more, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Tony.”

“We’re almost there!”

“That we are.”

The truck slowed, wheezed, shifted gears. Tony and Mistie jumped. Kate took a breath, prayed for strength, and followed.

“LamesaBoulevard,” said Tony, slapping the directory shut and digging at her scalp. They were at a phone behind a tire store. The bank clock on the other side of the street read one forty-three a.m. “1837 Lamesa Boulevard. We find that, we find Burton’s ranch.”

“There might be a map in the front of the phone book,” said the teacher. “Look, quickly.”

Tony opened the book again, and pawed through the thin pages. Zip codes, emergency number, town map. “How about that.” Lamesa Boulvevard, B-5. Tony drew her fingers down across to B, down 5. She paused, and frowned. “This can’t be right. It looks like it’s in town. A ranch isn’t in the middle of no town.”

The teacher was standing with Mistie in her arms, glancing back and forth along the dark side street. Mistie had fallen asleep several blocks back. “I don’t know, Tony. Maybe it’s an old map. Maybe there’s a misprint. But we can’t hang here. We have to get to your Dad’s right away.”

Tony nodded. She reached out toward Mistie. “Give her to me for a while.” The teacher passed the girl over, gratefully. “But I’m only doing it because you can’t walk,” said Tony, “and you’d walk even worse carrying the kid.”

“Absolutely. I don’t want to slow us down.”

“Okay.” Tony rubbed her chin, took several steps away from the phone and glanced at the side street sign. “This is Grove. So Lamesa Boulevard’s gotta be that way.”

The teacher moved surprisingly fast for someone with a ruptured bullet wound in her leg, but not surprisingly fast for someone who was on the FBI wanted list for kidnapping. The three took the Lamesa street-sides with silent effort, moving along sidewalks when there were sidewalks, dodging parked cars on the roads when there weren’t. Tony watched where she was going; she watched her feet. Her toe caught in an uneven lip of concrete and she stumbled, but didn’t fall. Mistie breathed softly Tony’s neck.

Tony shifted the child from one hip to the other. It’d be a bitch to be a mother, having to carry kids around like this all the time. Cars roared past but didn’t slow down, didn’t seem concerned or curious. The drivers had their own businesses to attend to. They had homes and families to return to. They had Christmas trees and lights and candles. They had people who were glad they were home, and who didn’t want them to leave.

Tony grit her teeth and forced her feet ahead even more quickly. She had all that, too. At 1837 Lamesa Boulevard.

There was heavy wheezing from behind, but Tony didn’t look back. The teacher was hurting but there wasn’t anything to be done. Not yet.

They crossed an intersection. Another, turning their faces from the bright illumination of the overhead streetlights and into the faint light from the moon. They waited for a red light to stop traffic, and they crossed yet another street. The kid’s breath was starting to get on Tony’s nerves. In the distance, she thought she could hear the distant whine of a police siren, but it might have only been her own blood fighting its way through her vessels in her skull.

And then she saw the sign, bent, green, white letters. “Lamesa Boulevard.” Crickets hummed in a nearby yard. Tony’s heart picked up the rhythm. We’re here!

“Mistie, wake up,” said Tony. She lowered the child to the walk, but the girl’s legs buckled under her. “Mistie!” She picked Mistie up under her arms and gave her a little shake. “We’re almost there. If you walk, we’ll get there quicker! Last one to the ranch is a rotten egg!”

Mistie opened her eyes and shook her head. “We’re there?”

“Almost! Can you race me?”

Mistie nodded sleepily.

“Can you?” Tony asked the teacher. The teacher said, “I’ll do the best I can.”

Lamesa Boulevard was a residential stretch with small yards and even smaller houses. Burton’s ranch would be at the end of all this, where the town ended and the Texas wilderness began. Maybe the people in these homes worked on the ranch. Maybe ranches didn’t have bunkhouses anymore, they let people have their own houses in town. That made sense. It really wasn’t the old cowboy days anymore.

Tony held Mistie’s hand and they trotted up the sidewalk, past house after house after house after the entrance to a small RV park after house.

Tony stopped. She let go of Mistie’s hand. She looked at the little stone house beside her. The black vinyl numbers on the white, door side mailbox read, “1851.”