I find the car on craigslist.
It doesn’t matter what kind, I don’t think, but if you need more than that to work with, it’s boxy, midnight black. The kind of color that disappears when it’s next to any other. Backseat big enough to sleep in. It was offered up in a hastily written ad in a sea of hastily written ads, but this one riddled with spelling errors that suggested a special kind of desperation. Make an offer, pleas settled it for me. It means I need money now which means someone’s in trouble or they’re hungry or they’ve got a chemical kind of itch. It means I’ve got the advantage, so what else can I do but take it?
It doesn’t occur to me that meeting someone on a road outside of town to buy a car for any amount of money I’m willing to pay might not be the safest thing in the world but that’s only because what I’m going to do once I have the car is even more dangerous than that.
“You could die,” I say, just to see if the clean weight of those words off my tongue will somehow shock their reality into me.
It doesn’t.
I could die.
I grab my green canvas backpack off the floor, shrug it over my shoulders and run my thumb over my bottom lip. May Beth gave me blueberries last night and I ate them for breakfast when I woke up today. I’m not sure if they’ve stained my mouth and I have a hard enough time with good first impressions as it is.
The screen door on the trailer is rusted out, sparks a whine into all our surrounding Nowhere That Matters, but if you need a visual, picture a place far, far less than suburbia and then imagine me, a few more rungs down that ladder living in a trailer rented from Fed-Me-Blueberries May Beth for as long as I’ve been alive. I live in a place that’s only good for leaving, is all that needs to be said about it, and I don’t let myself look back. Doesn’t matter if I want to, it’s just better if I don’t.
I grab my bike and ride my way out of town, briefly stopping on the green bridge over Wicker’s River where I stare down at the water and feel the dizzying pull of its raging current in my gut. I dig through my bag, pushing aside clothes, bottles of water, some potato chips and my wallet until I find my cell phone tangled up in a ball of underwear. Cheap piece of plastic; doesn’t even have a touchscreen. I throw it in the water and then I get back on my bike and ride out to Meddler’s Road, off the highway, to meet the woman who wrote the craigslist ad. Her name is Becki with an i. She’d write that, with an i, like I couldn’t see it for myself in every email she sent. She’s standing next to the boxy, midnight-black car, one hand rested on its hood and the other on her pregnant belly. Behind her, another car is parked, a little newer. A man sits at the wheel with his arm hanging out the open window and he’s tense until he sees me and then all his tension seems to melt away. It’s offensive. I’m dangerous.
You shouldn’t underestimate people, I want to call out. I have a knife.
It’s true. There’s a switchblade in my back pocket, a leftover from one of my mother’s boyfriends, Keith. Long time ago. He had the nicest voice of all of them—so soft it was almost fuzzy—but he was not a nice man.
“Lera?” Becki asks, because that’s the name I gave her. It’s my middle name. It’s easier to say than my own. Becki surprises me, the way she sounds. Like a scraped knee. Longtime smoker, I’d bet. I nod and take the cash-fatted envelope from my pocket and hold it out. Eight hundred in all. Okay, so she countered my initial offer of five but I know it’s a good deal. I’m more or less paying for the repairs they made on the body. Becki says I should get a good year out of it at least. “You sounded a lot older in your email.”
I shrug and extend my arm a little farther. Take the money, Becki, I want to say, before I ask you what you need it for. Because the man in the car does look pretty itchy; unfixed. I know that look. I’d know it anywhere, on anyone. I could see it in the dark.
Becki rubs her swollen belly and moves a little closer.
“Your mama know you’re out here?” she asks and I settle on a shrug, which seems to satisfy her until suddenly it doesn’t anymore. She frowns, looking me up and down. “No, she don’t. Why’d she let you come out here all alone to buy a car?”
It’s not a question I can shake, nod, or shrug to. I lick my lips and steel myself for the fight. I have a knife, I want to tell the thing that likes to wrap its hands around my voice.
“My m-mom’s d-d-d—”
The more I d-d-d the redder her face gets, the less she knows where to look. Not at me, not directly in my eyes. My throat feels tight, too tight, choked, and the only way I can free myself is if I stop attempting to connect the letters altogether. No matter how hard I try in front of Becki, they’ll never connect. I’m only fluent when I’m alone.
“—ead.”
The stutter’s hold loosens.
I breathe.
“Jesus,” Becki says and I know it’s not because of the inherent sadness of what I’ve just told her, it’s because of the broken way it came out of my mouth. She steps back a little because that shit is catching, you know, and if she gets it, there’s a 100 percent chance she’ll pass it on to her fetus. “Should you—I mean, can you drive?”
It’s one of the more subtle ways someone has asked me if I’m stupid, but that doesn’t make it any less maddening coming from a woman who can’t even spell the word please. I tuck the envelope back in my pocket, let that speak for me. Mattie used to say it was my stubbornness, not my stutter, that was my worst quality, but one wouldn’t exist without the other. Still. I can afford the risk of pretending Becki’s ignorance is more than I’m willing to fork over for her used-up car. She laughs a little, embarrassed. Says, “What am I talking about? Of course you can…” And again, less convincingly: “Of course you can.”
“Yeah,” I say, because not every word I speak turns itself into pieces. The vocal normalcy relaxes Becki and she quits wasting my time, shows me the car still works by bringing the engine alive. She tells me the spring on the trunk is busted and jokes she’ll let me keep the stick they use to prop it open at no extra charge.
I hmm and uh-huh my way through the transaction until it’s official and then I sit on the hood of my new car and watch them reverse out, turning left onto the highway. I twirl the car key around my finger while the early morning heat slowly envelops me. The bugs find me an affront to their territory and make a feast of my pale white, freckled skin. The dry, dusty smell of road tickles my nostrils, speaking to the part of me that’s ready to go, so I slide off the car and roll my bike into the brush, watching it fall unspectacularly on its side.
May Beth gives me blueberries sometimes, but she also collects expired license plates, displaying them proudly inside the shed behind her double-wide. All different colors and states, sometimes countries. May Beth has so many license plates, I don’t think she’ll miss two. The registration stickers are courtesy of old Mrs. Warner, three trailers down from mine. She’s too frail to drive and doesn’t need them anymore.
I muddy the plates up and wipe my dirty palms on my shorts as I round the car and get in the driver’s side. The seats are soft and low and a cigarette burn marks the space between my legs. I slip the key into the ignition and the motor growls. I push my foot against the gas and the car rolls over the uneven terrain, following the same path out Becki took, until I reach the highway and then I go in the opposite direction.
I lick my lips; the taste of blueberries long since left them but not so long I can’t still imagine their puckered sweetness enough to miss it. May Beth will be so disappointed when she knocks on my door and finds me gone, but I don’t think she’ll be surprised. Last thing she said to me, my face cupped firmly in her hands, was, Whatever you’re thinking, you get it out of that damned foolish head of yours right now. Except it’s not in my head, it’s in my heart, and she’s the same woman who told me if you’re going to follow anything, it might as well be that.
Even if it is a mess.