Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,50

at the beginning have an order, as well. Fried chicken, potato salad, tamales, tacos al pastor, fried pies, and homemade biscuits abound. As I scan what I’m being asked to prepare, I find myself getting excited. In just a few weeks, I’ve gone from being midguidedly passionate about some pasty tourist putting ketchup on tasteless eggs to trying to remember where Momma put all those old family recipes. After only wanting Texas in my rearview, I’m now chomping at the bit to dig into five generations of North Star dirt for inspiration. Whatever I think of North Star and the past I thought I left here, this food has always been what comforted me. It made me feel as if I belonged somewhere. It’s where home was, especially when we had no home.

But then this darkness clouds over it all. Who I’m cooking for, when they’re going to eat it. Where I am. I need to stay in the kitchen—mentally and physically. I will get my order and cook it to the best of my ability. I’ll know that someone who really needs a little bit of comfort is receiving it. It’s not for me to judge what they’ve done to land here. I can’t get caught up in their crimes, the victims, and the victims’ families—like Shawn said, this is the law, this is my job, so I will do it with integrity. I know this feels like a cop-out, like a child pressing her hands to her ears and screaming at the top of her lungs so she doesn’t have to listen. And maybe there’s some of that simply because I can’t face the magnitude of what happens within these Death House walls.

It’s not as if I haven’t experienced violence in the past. I’ve been part of one of those victim’s families that were visited by police reciting their robotic apologies at “my loss.” It somehow seems fitting that I’m here. A part of this violent world again. As long as Mom was around, there were police in our lives: the sheriff driving her home when she’d had too much to drink, barroom brawls, jealous wives vandalizing our possessions (what little we had). The red and blue flashing lights outside our windows became less and less of an event and more and more of a common occurrence.

I was just sixteen when Momma was murdered. She was beautiful. Flaming red hair, big boobs, and porcelain skin like you couldn’t believe. She had clear blue eyes that seemed mysterious and compelling. People couldn’t help but stare at her as she swayed her curves to and fro down North Star’s streets. Merry Carole’s figure was clearly inherited. But Momma was someone I stopped trying to figure out long before she died. Those blue eyes that were so intoxicating to me as a child weren’t mysterious at all. They were cruel and heartless. People were either stepping stones or obstacles, and that included her kids. Love wasn’t something she was even capable of. It was an act she put on so a man would think she was the marrying kind, only to tell us to wait at the Dairy Queen while “she had company.” Most times, the manager at the Dairy Queen would have to call Fawn or Yvonne Chapman when Momma didn’t come for us. They’d come get us and we’d spend the night at their house, sharing a guest bed or curled up on the couch. Momma wouldn’t come for us for days.

I’m sure there’s scar tissue and buttons being pushed all through the rubble of what my life has become. But for me it was always clear: my family was Merry Carole and now Cal, too. And when I couldn’t turn to Merry Carole, I had Everett. I also had Dee. Mom was someone we carried to bed, filled in for at the burger shack, and apologized for every day of our lives.

But that day.

The day the principal walked into my classroom, whispered in the teacher’s ear, and motioned for me to follow him without so much as a smile is burned into my brain. I remember following him down the hallway and trying to inventory what I’d done wrong. I was sixteen. I thought, maybe they figured out I’d been forging Momma’s signature on all my permission slips. Maybe Everett’s parents had found out about us and we were going to be disciplined for that. But what would we be “charged with”? I had the tiniest of fears