The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,104
tolerable personality into something the devil dredged up.
Nick tried to break my mom and Liz apart, but he wasn’t successful. Other officers were rushing over. I had to stop this before it got really ugly. I leaned over and wrapped my arms around Mom’s midsection, which seemed to have grown in recent months, and pulled with all my might, but my mom was a hefty force not to be messed with. She purposely pushed back with her hips and I fell right on top of her causing Liz Harrington to get totally squashed under the weight. Her breath came out in a loud whoosh.
“I can’t . . . breathe,” Liz gasped.
I grabbed my mom tight around her oversized waist with both arms, and rolled off Liz pulling my mom with me. She weighed much more than I expected, and kept throwing punches with her short little legs and arms flailing like some beetle turned over on its back trying desperately to right itself. I could feel my lungs tighten with each of her kicks.
“I can’t . . . breathe,” I echoed.
But my mom didn’t stop squirming.
“I’m dying here,” I pleaded to no one in particular.
Lisa charged into action and somehow managed to lift my mom off me and back up on her feet in one fell swoop. Then she swung her into the arms of a burly male officer. “Stay,” Lisa ordered, and my mother obeyed.
Nick knelt between Liz and me. “Are you two okay?”
But neither one of us could speak. We were too busy trying to catch our collective breaths. My mom, on the other hand, was chomping at the bit and ready to attack again. The burley cop held on tight, but it was all he could do to control her. She kept squirming and screaming, “Let me at her. Just one more time. Let me flatten that smug face of hers. I’ll get her to admit she burned Dickey.”
Nick helped both Liz and me back to our feet. I was completely covered in dirt, again. Just moving stirred it around me in a billowing cloud. I felt a little like Pigpen from Peanuts.
My mother was also covered in dirt, but it didn’t stop her from pounding on the cop, trying to get free. I was impressed with her fortitude, but I could tell the cop was losing patience. He suddenly swung her around and clamped on cuffs, which sent my mother into hysterical overdrive.
“These things don’t belong on me, they belong on her.” She stuck out her chin in Liz’s direction.
Liz seemed a bit dazed and wasn’t paying much attention to my mom. Instead, she was intensely interested in the dirt on her hands, dress and coat. She pulled out an individually wrapped wet wipe from her purse and began washing herself like a cat even as a Sheriff helped her into the backseat of a squad car.
My mom continued with her rage. “She’s the one who tried to kill my daughter. Get these things off me. They’re going to ruin my bracelet.” And as soon as she said it, the silver bracelet slipped from her wrist and fell to the ground. “See what you did. You broke it, and after I spent all afternoon fixing it. You’re a bully, that’s what you are. You can’t do this to me. It’s not fair.”
Then she hauled off and kicked him in the shin.
And with that, the cop carted her away as my mom yelled out my name in some ear piercing tone I’d never heard before. I turned toward her, thinking I could somehow prevent this madness from happening. The very thing I’d been trying to avoid was now about to take place and I was powerless to do anything.
Nick stepped in front of me, picked up the broken bracelet, the bracelet that had been under murdered Dickey’s feet, handed it to me and said. “I think you should let her cool down for the night, and unless you want to join her, you won’t try to stop this. We have a lot of questions for her, and it’s best for everyone if we take her to our facility in Santa Rosa to continue this.”
“And you think you’re going to get information while she’s in custody?”
I slipped the bracelet in my purse. It seemed as though the damn thing kept popping up whenever Dickey was around. At least my mom wasn’t lying about the broken clasp.