Problem Child (Jane Doe #2) - Victoria Helen Stone Page 0,40
have a job?” I ask.
Another raspberry from my mom. The woman is truly a master of Shakespearean buffoonery.
“Okay. Does she play soccer?”
“Yeah, right. She’d get her skinny ass kicked up and down that field.”
Interesting. I slide the cards into my pocket and poke around a little more. The dresser yields no more surprises, and the rest of the room is crowded with more boxes of my parents’ belongings. I have no idea what they’ve managed to accumulate so efficiently over the years. A bunch of crap anyone else would throw away, I suppose.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about some niece you don’t even know,” my mom snipes again as I rifle through the clothing in the tiny closet. “You can’t even be bothered to worry about your own parents. We couldn’t find you anywhere! What kind of a bitch changes her number after her own daddy has a stroke?”
“The kind of bitch whose loving mother calls her a bitch all the time would be my best guess.”
“I call a spade a spade and a bitch a bitch. You are a goddamn devil child and you always were.”
Her insults used to enrage me, but I’ve heard them so many times, they inspire nothing but amusement. My mother and father made me who I am, so let them experience me in all my glory.
When I consider my childhood—and I rarely do—it’s strange to me that I turned out this way when others don’t. There weren’t years of horrific physical abuse. No incest. Nobody locking me in a crawl space or chaining me to a bed. It was just the drip, drip of emotional abuse and endless neglect accented with a dash of sexual assault, same as so many other kids in this world face.
I assume my genetics helped. My parents are both screwed up and narcissistic, and Ricky isn’t far from sociopathy himself. What a nasty little genetic brew my folks created.
Ricky caused more trouble than I did growing up, but my parents mostly left him alone. I’m not sure if that was straight-up misogyny or if my mother hated me in particular for some reason. It’s not even worth puzzling over. She’s worthless and mean, and I’m too strong to bother with her anymore.
“Do you think that Little Dog guy could have taken her? He’s gone too, or so people are saying.”
“Who knows, but he didn’t come around here looking for her like everyone else.”
I set down the pillow I was checking under and turn to narrow my eyes at my mother. “Who’s ‘everyone else’?”
There’s a quick flinch of the lined skin around my mom’s eyes. A deep swallow as her gaze darts away from me. “Friends. Acquaintances. Whatever.”
I could threaten her, try to force her into some kind of truth, but my mom is slippery if she’s anything. She’s conned so many do-gooders out of so many donations over the years, and pinning her down on her lies is like trying to nail snot to a wall, as the old saying goes.
She might even have less shame than I do. But she does love to talk shit about people.
“You said there were grown men coming around here. Boyfriends?”
“Boyfriends!” Her smile is a hard, mean line, just lips stretched straight over teeth. “More like customers, considering the cash they flashed around.”
“Did you tell the cops that?”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Like I want everyone in town knowing what my granddaughter is. One guy wanted it so bad, he paid me money! That girl must’ve sucked the chrome right off his hitch. Looked like a cop too.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs, still smiling tight and mean. “Serious. Bald. Wearing a sport coat. And I saw he had a gun on him.”
“And then you . . . sold him information about your teenage granddaughter.” I’m not the least bit surprised.
She blows another raspberry. “All I did was point him toward Little Dog’s place. Figured Mr. Man could ask his questions there and stop bothering me. You think I need all the neighbors gossiping about who’s knocking on my door day and night? This is a respectable home, despite her best efforts.”
“When was this?”
“Week after Kayla took off.” She tugs a cigarette from her pocket to light it. “We need to talk about Daddy now that you’re home. He’s your own flesh and blood.”
“I ain’t home,” I correct her, and walk straight toward the hall until she’s forced to back out of the doorway and let me through.