Gram only laughed, a croaking sound that sent spit flying, some of it landing on me. I couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
“What’re you so shy for, Hailey?” Gram wheezed. “Your mama was sure hot for it. Wa’n’t right in the head and couldn’t talk sense, but that didn’t keep her from sashaying around like a cat in heat when she got grown.”
That stopped me cold. Gram never talked about my mother. All I knew about her was that she had died in childbirth and that she wasn’t “right in the head.” I thought maybe that last part was why Gram wouldn’t talk about her, some sort of grief that had got all twisted up into ugliness and silence-Gram wouldn’t even tell me her name, and there were no pictures of her in the house.
“What-what-” I stammered, and Gram’s lips curved up in smug satisfaction. She had me. I hated her for it, but she had me.
“Oh, so
“Who-” I started, and then I licked my dry lips, hating myself for the question I was about to ask. I’d asked often enough before to know that she would never tell. “Who was my father?”
Gram’s laughter turned into a coughing fit, but the tears she wiped from her rheumy eyes were full of mean amusement. “That-” she began, then gasped her way through another round of coughs. “That’s quite the question, ain’t it? Could be anyone.”
I had learned a few things about Gram, living with her for sixteen years. I didn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes, the way she drew her lips in. Gram was lying to me. Only, I didn’t know why. What was she hiding? Sometimes it seemed like we weren’t even related to each other-she was so frail, as though her body was just waiting to die, and I had never been sick a day in my life. But she also knew me better, in some ways, than I knew myself. I hated that. I couldn’t help thinking of the conversation earlier, the way she’d asked all those questions about Milla, as though she had some secret knowledge about what had happened. One thing was sure, though: nothing would make Gram tell me anything she wanted to keep secret.
It was pointless to keep talking to her. I tried to walk away, but Gram stopped me.
“What’s your hurry, Hailey?” she said. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray I’d already emptied twice that day, and held out her arms. “We got callers. Here, git me up.”
Only then did I hear the sound of a car in the yard. I did as she asked, seizing her hands and pulling harder than necessary, so Gram stumbled as she stood. I let her lean on me as she cracked her knuckles and worked her neck one way and the other.
When I was sure she wouldn’t fall, I took Chub to get ready for bed. Ordinarily I’d bathe him, but Gram’s callers were likely to start drinking beer and need the toilet before long.
I brushed Chub’s teeth with a soft-bristled brush and the strawberry-flavored kids’ toothpaste I’d splurged on. I wiped him down with a clean cloth and changed his pull-up. He was four, way too old to still be in diapers; I’d tried everything I could think of to get him to use the toilet, but nothing worked.
As I wiped down the sink, he wrapped his arms around my thighs and said, “Loo, Hayee.” He said this from time to time, and I was convinced it was “I love you, Hailey,” even if I didn’t have any way to prove it. I knelt down on the floor and hugged him, breathing his sweet baby scent. “Me and you,” I whispered. “Always.”
In two more years I’d be eighteen. I’d graduate from high school and the social services people would stop coming around checking on me. And if we were lucky, we’d go so far away that they’d never be able to find Chub.
On the other side of the door I heard voices, and I recognized the loudest: Dunston Acey. Not good. I tried to slip quietly to my room, but before I reached the door his whiskey-rough voice came after me.
“Hailey, come out here so’s I can see you!”
I froze, trying to decide if I could pretend I hadn’t heard him, but Gram’s voice followed: “Git the boy put down quick, girl, we got company!”
I did as they said. Once I’d sung to Chub and rubbed his back, and his breathing had gone deep and even with sleep, I couldn’t put it off any longer. They’d only come into the room and turn on the lights and wake Chub up. Nothing stopped Gram and her customers when they were partying.
I walked into the kitchen and said hello with as little enthusiasm as possible.
Three pairs of eyes regarded me-Gram and Dun and another man, who was standing in the shadows in the far corner. When he stepped into the light, I saw with a sinking heart that it was Rattler Sikes.
Of all the sorry and mean and no-good men who came through our house, Rattler was the worst. He was one of the only ones who didn’t do drugs or, as far as I knew, drink alcohol, but once in a while he’d show up in the company of some of the others and stand in the corner of the room, watching and saying little.
Everyone knew the stories about him. Rattler was one of the few people in Trashtown who got talked about by the rest of Gypsum, probably because the sheriff had been trying to nail him for years. Only, he never managed to make any charges stick.
They said Rattler did things to women. Terrible things, things that left them messed up on the outside and the inside alike. It was only Trashtown women that he went after, and maybe that was part of why the sheriff’s department couldn’t bring him down. As long as trouble stayed inside the borders of Trashtown, Gypsum people didn’t care much about what went on there.
They said that women would go out with Rattler-it was hard to imagine they went willingly-and then they’d be found wandering back into town in the early hours of the morning, sometimes barefoot, sometimes nearly naked, always unwilling or unable to talk about what had happened. None of them ever wanted to press charges, but those women were never the same again.
“My, you’re looking fine today,” Dun said, raising a bottle in my direction before taking a long drink. Gram had a policy that anything a customer drank or smoked in the house was free-for the price of a few beers and some weed, she kept them entertained and happy, and if she tacked on a premium for the harder stuff, they never complained.
“I got to git down to the basement,” Gram said, sighing and fixing a look on me. I knew what she wanted-for me to go down and get whatever it was that Dun was buying tonight. But that was the one thing she couldn’t make me do: I refused to get involved with her dealing. I wouldn’t touch the pill bottles, wouldn’t read the labels, wouldn’t help her sort and bag the weed she got from a guy who drove it up from the Ozarks once a month. I wouldn’t do any of it, and whenever she asked I reminded her that all I had to do was make one phone call and she was done.
Of course, I was bluffing. I would never do anything to bring the authorities in, because that would mean that Chub and I would be split up. Gram was stupid about some things, and this most of all: she should have known what Chub meant to me.
Instead, she got up, sighing and snorting, and shuffled off to the basement stairs. It would take her a while, holding on to the handrail and taking the steps one at a time, before she was back with their stuff. I saw the pile of wadded cash in the middle of the table. It would stay there until Dun checked his purchases and slid them in his pockets, and then Gram would stuff the money into her purse on the counter. That was how it was always done.
I took the only empty chair and waited. Gram expected me to make small talk, but that didn’t mean I had to come up with sparkling conversation.
“Nice shirt,” Dun said. “Ain’t that a purty shirt, Rattler?”
I felt myself blush; my shirt was nothing special, a plain green scoop-neck top I’d bought secondhand for fifty cents, but it was old and getting a little tight across my chest.
After that, Dun asked me about school and my grades and what I was watching on TV these days. He didn’t seem to mind that I gave him the shortest possible answers. Now and then he asked Rattler what he thought, but mostly he seemed content to do all the talking and drink his beer, popping the top off a fresh bottle when he finished one.
After what seemed like ages, Gram came clumping back up the stairs. She had two brown paper bags clutched in her hands, their tops folded down. She set them on the table in front of Dun, and the mood in the room changed.
No one was looking at me anymore. Everyone’s eyes were on the bags as Dun unrolled the paper and peered inside. After a second he reached in and pulled out the plastic bottles. He examined the labels, squinting. He looked
