what I get from the state and I put that toward a Wonderfully Delicious kit. Should be coming in a few weeks and then—“
“Wait, what’s this kit and what’s so wonderfully delicious about it?”
Arlene laughs as she uses a pair of metal tongs to deposit parts from the cut-up fryer chicken into the bag. “No, Atlanta, that’s the brand. Wonderfully Delicious. I’m going to be a saleslady for them. You order the kit and then people come over and you demo their… culinary products…” Way she says culinary it’s like she’s feeling along a dark room as she walks through it. Cu… lin… ary? “It’s going to be wonderful, sugar-pop.”
Oh, crap-on-a-stick.
“It’s like Amway.”
“It’s not like Amway. Amway’s a scam.”
“It’s just like Amway, Mom. For fuck’s sake—“
“Now watch your tongue, girl.”
“—don’t you remember back home when that older boy next door got wrapped up in it? He had to spend more money than he got back. Amway’s best customers are their dang salesmen. That’s how they make their money.”
Arlene, indignant, shakes the chicken bag. Flour and cornflakes do a herky-jerky polka inside.
“This is not that,” Arlene insists. “I get to host a party and be a real saleswoman. Like with Avon. Or Tupperware. It’s… esteemed.”
“It’s a pyramid scheme!” Atlanta’s hands ball up into frustrated fists. “Shit, Momma, how much did you spend?”
Shake shake shake. “Not your business.”
“I said, how much.”
“Like I said—“
“Momma.”
Arlene says in a much quieter voice. “Five hundred. Ah, five seventy five.” She upends the bag onto a nearby plate, which rattles as a pile of gluey chicken tumbles onto it. Each chicken piece has an uneven clumpy coating of flour and maybe two cornflakes per piece. Three on the breast. The rest are still in the bag. “Oh, what the hell I thought I did this right.”
Atlanta sees her mother’s eyes shimmering like they do in cartoons. Like the first few raindrops before the storm hits, sure enough the woman starts to whimper and her lips tighten up like a closed-up coin purse and the tears start to fall. Atlanta knows she’s supposed to go there and hug her but she just can’t stomach that right now and all she can do is scowl and stomp out of the kitchen.
* * *
Funny thing is, she was going to apologize to her mother. That was the talk she hoped to have. She wanted to say, “Mom, I’m sorry, but the reason the mortgage bill is due is because I pissed off a very powerful man and with the bank, well, he’s got the tiger by the tail and now he’s siccing the beast on us and I’m going to try to help make this right and I got a job and it’ll help pay a couple months and I’m sorry again.”
But it didn’t go like that.
It never goes like that.
Arlene stepped in it. Opened her mouth, stuck her pink-painted toenails all up in there. And now all Atlanta can think about is how mad she is at her mother and how this is actually Arlene’s fault—it was Arlene who didn’t pay the mortgage, which opened the door enough for the rats to come creeping in. It was Arlene who had a bad boyfriend, a boyfriend that saw Atlanta as dessert under glass, a young girl with neverending sexuality who surely didn’t mean those words she kept saying over and over again—no, don’t, stop—and who cried so hard not because she was sad but because she was overwhelmed by the strong emotion of it all.
Again that gunpowder stink. The shotgun’s in the closet but Atlanta can feel it there. Can almost see it through the wall like she’s got fucking X-Ray vision or something. She hears a man screaming. Here, in this room, in her bedroom. But not now. Then. The blast of a gun and blood on the sheets.
That began it all and it was Arlene’s fault and—
Atlanta rubs her eyes. She just can’t stop kicking over anthills to see what crawls out.
With an angry darting hand she snatches the folder. Opens it again. Flashes of raw skin beneath abraded fur. Of crusting over wounds. Blood gone from red to black. A ruined paw. A pink tongue pushed past a toothless mouth. She slams the folder shut again. It’s like a horrible drug. An ugly hit of Adderall straight to her soul—a car battery jump, crass but effective. It focuses her. Lets her put Arlene and the house out of her mind.
It’s then that Atlanta starts to put together