JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI
Ten years ago…
Her father rolled the blunt tight around his wide fingers. The tip pressed flat, small flakes of the herb dropped onto the yellow Formica table top. Between the dark gashes on the surface of the table and the many cigarette burns that made it dingy, Mollie Malone could see her splintered reflection.
She was thirteen with a small gap between her front teeth. Her father could not afford braces, said she would grow into those too large pearly whites. But she feared that her hair would always be a dull brown, that her dark eyes would remain unremarkable. That her life in her father’s too cramped, always filled home would never be more than what it was that night: a constant party, the filtering in and out of outlaw bikers and the people they attract.
“You want some, Mimi?” her father asked her, holding the lit blunt between his index finger and thumb. His graying dark hair was long, slicked back into a tight braid down his back. He had a handsome face, worn now by hard living and too many disappointments, but Mollie thought he was still good looking. She watched the red lines fracture the deep brown of his irises. They held a bloodshot tint that told Mollie how high he was.
He was stoned already, struck careless, irresponsible, by whiskey and weed but Mollie didn’t hesitate to reach through the smoke surrounding him. She figured this was no worse a life than the one that awaited her in Tennessee where her mother tried to ignore the life she had lived in Jackson, pretending she never loved a biker. Where social standing and designer labels were more important to her than the twice a year calls she made to Mollie on her birthday and at Christmas. She took Mollie’s sister, Katie, with her because she was blonde, because, unlike Mollie, she looked nothing like their father. Mollie’s laugh was identical to his and their eyes are a perfect match of whiskey brown. And so Mollie was eager to numb the loss she told herself had nothing to do with her mother’s abandonment, the monotony of the constant party, the strict rules in place for the daughter of the president of the Ministry of Malice motorcycle club.
She pinched the burning paper between her delicate fingers and mimicked her father’s deep inhale, held the smoke in her lungs before a burning cough choked her. The adults around her laughed, tickled by the site of “Lil Mimi” partaking in such grown up activity.
“Bet you won’t do that again anytime soon, huh, baby?” Her father took the blunt out of Mollie’s shaking fingers.
His laugh was deep, heady but before the ring of it died down in her ears, the sound of the door being ripped off its hinges leveled all humor from the room.
And then, there was chaos.
Before she had completely exhaled, the crowd of drunks scattered at the invasion of DEA agents storming through their small, brick home. She heard the screams of half-naked women, of her father’s Rottweilers growling, the splinter of wood and the shattering of glass.
“Hide, baby. Now,” her father said and Mollie didn’t hesitate. It was a familiar routine; systematic and instinctive. He taught her to flee from cops, to never trust them, to certainly never speak to them. Ministry club business was private and even the slightest twitch of her eye or the smallest shrug of her shoulders could spill secrets she was not supposed to know. It could take him away from her.
Mollie was small. Her bones were petite and thin and so it was easy for her to bypass the activity, to slink unnoticed between the large, swinging hands, the thundering feet as they shoved her father’s nose down on the floor, as they twisted his wrists behind his back. She managed through the pandemonium, out of the house and into the woodshed, hiding beneath the inky darkness of the night. And there, listening to the barking dogs, the boisterous rebuke from her father and his club brothers, Mollie waited.
The shed was set back from their home, against a corner of the five-acre lot surrounded by heavy woods. The Compound, her father called it. It was meant to be a safe haven from wandering eyes, from the agencies and laws that sought to catch them in the act; from other clubs angry about territory, about cash.
Cloistered in the small, metal building with its ceiling dipping in the center and the stacks of logs and rows of axes, Mollie curled beneath a gray tarp, praying that she would be ignored, that her father would fetch her with the morning light. He always had before. She counted the rows of logs, watched the small insects tunnel over them, in them and, she waited. She waited until her eyes grew heavy, until the weed and exhaustion dented her fear and she fell asleep.
It was the quiet that woke her, not her father’s gentle nudge or the sensation of him carrying her back into the house. The echoes of the dogs barking, growling, faded. She knew hours had passed when her eyes flew open and she sat up straight, alert, aware of the silence. She had been forgotten, displaced from the chaos.
Mollie stepped over glass, debris, saw that her home had been destroyed in the authority’s eagerness to uncover some great crime, some proof that her father was a bad, bad man. Windows were cracked, furniture overturned and the dogs had been locked outside, four large animals bumping together in a single kennel. She heard them whine, the scuff of their feet brushing against the black cage and went to them, left the back door open. It was likely, she figured, that the authorities didn’t care. It didn’t matter to them that she was thirteen and had been left alone to fend for herself.
She wiggled her fingers through the cage, letting Zeus, her father’s largest and most fearsome Rottweiler, sniff and lick her knuckles. She thought that she should keep them there. She didn’t want to round them up, chasing them around the yard if the cops made a reappearance and so Mollie fetched the animals some water and a full helping of food and watched them scarf everything down, ignoring her own stomach as it rumbled.
As night crept closer and the mosquitoes popped and fried against the humming blue light of the bug zapper, Mollie abandoned her fear of anyone returning and led the dogs into the house. They slept with her that night. And the next. She tried to keep busy, to ignore that growing worry of being alone, of her father not returning as the hours passed. Zeus refused to move out of her father’s recliner when she swept up the glass. She tidied her room, made peanut butter and chocolate syrup sandwiches, played with the dogs, chased them through the house when they dug into the freshly filled trash bags and then, night came again.
Laying in her bed with dogs at her knees and across her legs, snoring louder than her father ever had, Mollie let her mind wonder, let that worry bubble, grow until she felt the pinpricks of tears warming her cheeks. Surely, someone should have come by now. Spider, at least. He was her father’s Vice President; he would take over when her father was away. He should have come already. But Mollie didn’t see Spider or one of his old ladies in the days that passed. She didn’t see anyone but the fat, lazy dogs eating their weight in whatever she’d thrown out of the fridge.
Then, on the third day, Mollie woke to the sound of Zeus and his brothers howling their warning as a car pulled up the long, gravel driveway. She wrangled the dogs, moved them into their kennel and peeked through the front room blinds, hoping the shadows of the dim morning light would hide her away, at least give her enough time to sneak back to the shed.
She saw the woman’s legs first—long, tanned and then the elegant gray suit she wore. Mollie closed her eyes, wishing the visitor was a cop, that the pinched frown on the woman’s face was instead the concerned smile of a state trooper.
“Shit.”
She had not seen her mother in four years. She had never been invited to Tennessee for holidays, but as Mollie watched her mother walk up the front porch and then enter the house without knocking—a linen handkerchief in her hand covering the doorknob—she realized that the woman had aged. Years of heavy drinking and chain smoking lined her face. Her blonde hair had faded and was brittle like hay.
“Hi, baby.” Mollie thought the word was forced, that it was wrong somehow for her mother to call her “baby.”
“What do you want?” She could tell by the determined set of her mother’s shoulders that there would be a battle. Mollie was her father’s child, there was no denying it; she had his chin, his eyes, his odd, piercing laugh. But she was also her mother’s daughter. They had the same urge to debate, to be right at all costs.
That day, the battle lines were drawn, mother against daughter and Mollie knew she would get no leeway and certainly no happy reunion.
“I’ve come to take you home.” Her mother moved into the room, eyes fanning over Mollie’s half attempted clean up. There was trash on the kitchen floor that the dogs had ripped into the night before. Mollie had told herself she’d clean it in the morning, but her mother’s abrupt appearance deferred her. The kitchen was clean, but the paint was old, the same pale yellow her mother had painted it years before. Mollie could see it all in her mother’s eyes—nothing had changed since she had left. When the woman’s gaze locked onto the dogs growling through the opened backdoor, she walked toward it, slamming it shut as she glared at the Rottweilers. “Get your things. We’re going home.” She didn’t bother looking at Mollie when she delivered her order.
“I am home.” Mollie didn’t care that her mother’s face was exaggerated, the lines deepened when she frowned.
“This is no place for a thirteen year-old girl, Mollie. Your father has gotten himself into some serious trouble. And unless you want to end up in the system, then I’m your only choice.”
Mollie knew it would have been pointless to argue. Her father had been gone a while, longer than she expected and even the women who straggled about, hoping to be made an official “Old Lady” weren’t there to watch her. And they were always there.
She tried to ignore her mother’s pinched look of disgust. Her eyes scanned the yard through the window, to the loose bits of car engines and motorcycle parts that were scattered amid broken fencing and rusted swings. She knew what her mother thought; it’s what everyone thought—kids at school, social workers who attempted to pull Mollie from the only home she’d ever known: that they were trash. Mollie lived in squalor, they all thought. She was surrounded by a criminal element and needed rescuing.
But they didn’t know what family was. They didn’t know that Mollie was safer at the Compound than she would have been anywhere else in the world. They didn’t know what it was to have fifteen burly men watch over you like you were their own. They didn’t know that her father always made sure she’d completed her homework, that her teeth were cavity free, that when he hugged her, she could feel how much he loved her, how he would have killed to protect her without a moment’s hesitation.
They didn’t know that family was more than blood and history, but trust, companionship and being there every day.
“Let’s go,” her mother said, her voice stern, demanding.
Mollie let her anger calm, let it collect and pool into her heart. It would have been pointless to fight the woman on this. It would most likely mean more trouble than Mollie could handle without backup.
“I’m only staying until Daddy is out.” She didn’t like her mother’s small sneer or how her smile echoed concession.
“Sure, baby, sure.”
Mollie followed the woman away from the whining dogs, from the cluster of rubbish and trash that circled her home.