back, she screamed as if she’d been stabbed. We might as well have stood her up on a tree stump and driven an ax through her longways. She fought and kicked and screamed for her mother. She ran over and held on to me as if she were caught in a tornado and I was the last fence post still standing. But by then, I was worn out and heartsick, and I turned away. Even as she was reaching for me, I turned away and stepped inside my house and closed the door. I listened while the men grabbed her and wrestled her into the back of the ambulance and slammed the door closed.
And now, here in town, people are making this child out to be some kind of liar, or blackmailer, or slut. Forgive us our trespasses, all right. I cup my hands together and allow the water to pool in my palms. What will I be a part of, here in Odessa? What will my days look like now, and who will I become? Same old Mary Rose? Grace Cowden? I smile just a little and when the water begins to seep between my fingers, I squeeze them tightly together. I can drink from it, this cup made with my own hands, if I hurry up—and so I do. I slurp loudly, water dribbling down my chin while Grace makes little sounds in her throat. Again, I bend down and allow my hands to fill back up. Maybe discretion is the better part of valor. Then again, maybe it isn’t. And knowing that I have failed another woman’s daughter in all the ways that matter, I now want badly to be a person of valor.
And what will my great act of valor look like?
This: Just as the esteemed Mrs. L. D. Cowden begins to talk about how I should get more rest and maybe think about supplementing with baby formula, I lift my face from the lavatory, hold up my two cupped hands, and fling the water into her face.
Grace stands perfectly still. Finally, she has nothing to say. After a few seconds she lifts her hand and wipes the water from her forehead and flicks it to the bathroom floor. Well, she says. That was rude.
Go to hell, I tell her. Why don’t you go pack boxes for those poor people y’all can’t quit judging?
I could have two sick kids and a pantry full of nothing, and Robert would complain about having to leave the ranch. But the moment he hears about this, he drives into town. It takes nothing for me to close my eyes and imagine the phone ringing off the hook in our farmhouse kitchen, Robert standing there with a bologna sandwich in his hand while some woman, or her husband, expresses grave concern for my well-being. After the kids are in bed, he follows me from room to room hollering and raging while I pick up Aimee’s books and toys. My breast feels like someone is holding a lit torch to it. I fight the urge not to tear off my nursing bra and fling it on the living-room carpet.
Can’t you even try, Mary Rose, he says. Every day, I’m doing my damnedest to keep us from losing everything out there, land my family has worked for the past eighty years. He follows me into the kitchen and watches me pull out a paper bag and start filling it with cans of food he can take back to the farm. You think you’re doing our family any favors by making yourself out to be the town lunatic?
I kneel down and stare at a shelf full of canned goods, trying to do some math. I could have sworn there were still two cans of Hormel chili in there, and a can of corn too.
Robert’s boot is right next to my leg, close enough that I can smell the cow shit lingering on the leather. In the last forty-eight hours, he has lost more than a dozen cows to blowflies. The ones that didn’t die outright, he had to shoot and because blowflies lay their eggs on fresh carcasses, he pushed the corpses into a pile with his bulldozer and poured kerosene over them.
I stack the dinner dishes in the sink and turn on the hot water. What do you want me to say, Robert? People in this town seem bound and determined to believe that this whole thing is some sort of misunderstanding, some