face against the red-hot burner.
The little body writhed and jerked. She felt the terrible heat rising past him, washing into her own face. Robby's scream went on and on, his legs thrashing. She kept her hand pressed hard on the back of his head, there were tears in her eyes, and she was sick at heart because Robby had always been such a good baby.
His struggling ceased, and his scream ended with a sizzle.
The baby's head was melting.
Mary watched it happen as if she were outside her body looking down, a remote bystander cool in her curiosity. Robby's head was shrinking, little sparks of flame kicking up, and the pink flesh running in glistening strands. She could feel the heat beneath her hand. He was quiet now. He had learned who was in control.
She pulled him up off the burner, but most of his face stayed on the hot coils in a crisp black inside-out impression. Robby was dead.
'Hey, you crazy freak!' A voice through the thin wall. The old man next door, the one who went out on the highway collecting aluminum cans in a garbage bag. Shecklett, the name on his mailbox said. 'Stop that hollerin' or I'll call the cops! Hear me?'
Mary stared at the black-edged hole where Robby's face had been. The head was full of smoke. Plastic sparked on the burner, and the kitchen was rank with the sickeningly sweet smell of another infant's death.
'Shut up and let a man steep!' He struck the wall again, and the pictures of babies clipped from magazines and mounted in dimestore frames jumped on their nails.
Mary stood looking at the doll, her mouth half open and her gray eyes glassy. This one was gone. This one was ready for heaven. But he'd been such a good boy. She'd thought he was the best of them all. She wiped her eyes with a sluggish hand, and turned off the burner. Bits of plastic flamed and popped, a haze of blue smoke filming the air like the breath of ghosts.
She took the doll to a closet in the hallway. At the back of the closet was a cardboard box, and in that box were the dead babies. The signature of her rage lay here. Some of the dolls had been burned faceless, like Robby. Others had been decapitated, or were torn limb from limb. Some bore the marks of being crushed under tires, and some had been ripped open by knives or razors. All of them were little boys, and all of them had been her loves.
She peeled the sleepsuit with its yellow ducks off Robby. She held Robby with two fingers, like something filthy, and she dropped him into the box of death. She shoved the box into the back of the closet again, then she closed the door.
She put away the wooden crate that had served as a crib, and she was alone.
An eighteen-wheeler swept past on the highway, making the walls creak. Mary went into the bedroom with the slow gait of a sleepwalker. Another death freighted her soul. There had been so many of them. So many. Why didn't they mind her? Why did they always have to fight her will? It wasn't right that she fed them and clothed them and loved them and they died hating her in the end.
She wanted to be loved. More than anything in the world. Was that too much to ask?
Mary stood at the window for a long time, looking out at the highway. The trees were bare. Bleak January had gnawed the land, and it seemed that winter ruled the earth.
She dropped the sleepsuit into the clothes hamper in her bathroom. Then she walked to her dresser, opened the bottom drawer, reached under some folded-up sweaters, and found the Colt Snubnose.38. The shine had worn off, and in the six-bullet cylinder there was one shell.
Mary turned on the television set. The early morning cartoons from TBS were on. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. In the blue glow, Mary sat on the edge of her rumpled bed and spun the cylinder once, twice, and a third time.
She drew a long, deep breath, and she pressed the Colt's barrel against her right temple.
'C'mere, ya cwazy wabbit!'
'Who, me?'
'Yeah, you!'
'Ahhhhhh, what's up, d -'
She squeezed the trigger.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Mary let her breath go, and she smiled.
Her heart was beating hard, driving the sweet adrenaline through her body. She returned the pistol to its place beneath the sweaters, and she slid the drawer shut. Now she felt so much better, and Robby was just a bad memory. But she couldn't survive long without a baby to care for. No, she was a natural mother. An earth mother, it had once been said. She needed a new baby. She'd found Robby in a Toys 'R Us in Douglasville. She knew better than to go to the same store twice; she still had eyes in the back of her head, and she was always watching for any sign of the pigs. So she'd find another toy store. No sweat.
It was almost time to get ready for work. She needed to relax, and put on the face she wore beyond these walls. It was her Burger King face, smiling and friendly, no trace of steel in her eyes. She stood before the mirror in the bathroom, the harsh incandescent bar of light switched on, and she slowly let the face emerge. 'Yes ma'am,' she said to the person in the mirror. 'Would you like fries with that, ma'am?' She cleared her throat. The voice needed to be a little higher, a little dumber. 'Yes sir, thank you sir! Have a nice day!' She switched her smile off and on, off and on. Cattle needed to see smiles; she wondered if the people who worked in slaughterhouses smiled before they smashed the skulls of cattle with big wooden mallets.
The smiley face stayed on. She looked younger than her forty-one years, but there were deep lines at the corners of her eyes. Her long hair was no longer as blond as the summer sun. It was a mousy brown, streaked with gray. It would go up in a tight bun when she got to work. Her face was square and strong-jawed, but she could make it look weak and afraid, like a cow who senses the breaking of skulls in the long line ahead. There wasn't much she couldn't do with her face if she wanted. She could look old or young, timid or defiant. She could be an aging California girl or a backwoods hick with equal ease. She could slump her shoulders and look like a frightened schmuck, or she could stand at her full Amazonian height and dare any sonofamotherfuckingbitch to cross her path. It was all in the attitude, and she hadn't gone to drama school in New York City for nothing.
Her real name was not the name on her Georgia driver's license, her library card, her cable TV bills, or any of the mail that came to her apartment. Her real name was Mary Terrell. She remembered what they used to call her as they passed the joints and the cheap red wine and sang songs of freedom: Mary Terror.
She had been wanted for murder by the FBI since the spring of 1969.
Sergeant Pepper was dead. G.I. Joe lived on. George Bush was president, movie stars were dying from AIDS, kids were smoking crack in the ghettos and the suburbs, Muslims were blowing airliners from the skies, rap music ruled, and nobody cared much about the Movement anymore. It was a dry and dusty thing, like the air in the graves of Hendrix, Joplin, and God. She was letting her thoughts take her into treacherous territory, and the thoughts threatened her smiley face. She stopped thinking about the dead heroes, the burning breed who made the bombs full of roofing nails and planted them in corporate boardrooms and National Guard armories. She stopped thinking before the awful sadness crushed her.
The sixties were dead. The survivors limped on, growing suits and neckties and potbellies, going bald and telling their children not to listen to that satanic heavy metal. The dock of the Age of Aquarius had turned, hippies and yippies had become preppies and yuppies. The Chicago Seven were old men. The Black Panthers had turned gray. The Grateful Dead were on MTV, and the Airplane had become a top-forty Starship.
Mary Terror closed her eyes, and thought she heard the noise of wind whistling through the ruins.
I need, she thought. I need. A single tear coursed slowly down her left cheek.
I need something to call mine.
She opened her eyes and stared at the woman in the mirror. Smile! Smile! Her smile ticked back on. 'Thank you, sir. Would you like an ice-cold Pepsi with that burger?'
Her eyes were still hard, a chink in the disguise. She'd have to work on that.
She took off her plaid robe, stained by the applesauce that a convulsive jerk of her wrist had spilled upon it, and she looked at her nude body in the mean light. Her smile faded and went away. Her body was pale and loose, flabby around the belly, hips, and thighs. Her breasts sagged, the nipples grayish-brown. They looked empty. Her gaze fixed on the network of old scars that crisscrossed her stomach and her right hip, the ridges of scar tissue snaking down into the dark brown nest between her thighs. She ran her fingers over the scars, and felt their cruelty.
