Annabelle and her mother and Grandpa are at the Walmart, getting a new wooden folding table so Grandpa can sit on the couch and eat in front of the TV the way he likes to. He fell over the old one and broke it. He is always breaking things, dropping dishes, falling over furniture.
Annabelle’s mother pushes the wheelchair while Annabelle walks behind them. She drifts back farther and farther, stopping to examine a wooden mousetrap that looks just like the one in the cartoon, only without the cheese. There are roach motels and ant powder, cans of Raid and Black Flag. Annabelle has seen her mother spray the lines of ants that sometimes crawl in, along the floor and up the wall; when she finishes, the ants are dark specks her mother wipes away, and the air smells sticky and sweet.
When Annabelle looks up, her mother and Grandpa have turned the corner. She heads to the part of the store she likes best, where the finches and parakeets are. The birds live in a big, square mesh cage with several trapezes for them to perch on. She likes the bright colors of their feathers and the sounds they make and their round black eyes that reflect the fluorescent lights of the store. She loses track of time, watching them. Then the loudspeaker calls a Code Adam, which Annabelle knows from a TV movie means that the employees are supposed to look around for an unattended child. In less than a minute a boy with a shaved head and dirty fingernails is there, dragging her up front to the checkout counters. Her mother is standing with her arms crossed against her chest, looking angry at the world. Grandpa is asleep in his chair.
“You scared the crap out of me,” her mother says in her quiet voice that is scarier than her loud voice. She kneels down to take Annabelle by the shoulders and starts shaking her. “Look at me, dammit.”
Annabelle shifts her gaze to the ground, focusing on her mother’s sandaled feet, on the chipped scarlet polish of her toes. She feels that if her mother looks into her eyes, she’ll be able to see the two goldfish, swirling around there the way the second one did before it was sucked down into the toilet bowl. She will be able to see Annabelle in her Little Mermaid underwear, made up like a model and dancing for Grandpa, her face and hands smeared with chocolate.
Finally she thinks of something she saw on a different TV movie. She looks into her mother’s face and says, “I am fatherless.”
Annabelle names the parakeet Sam. Her mother bought it for her that day, and they even stopped at the Dairy Queen on the way home. Sam is blue and green and yellow. He sits in his cage on the coffee table during the day, chirping and ringing a little bell, and at night Annabelle puts the plastic flowered cover over the cage.
“Now, isn’t that better than a gerbil?” her mother says.
“I don’t know,” Annabelle says. “Can I still have one? Can I have a cat?” She thinks about the white cat that lives in the woods near Grandpa. It is a thin, bony thing that slinks out from the trees and streaks away if she moves toward it. She has named it Snowbelle, which means Beautiful Lady of the Snow, even though she doesn’t know if it’s a boy or girl. It hasn’t let her get close enough.
At church that Sunday the priest talks about the Holy Spirit. There’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is away in heaven, and the Son died for everyone’s sins, and the Holy Spirit is a dove that flies around, and comes down into you where you have an empty jar inside you, and it fills up your jar. If you don’t get the Holy Spirit, you are a sinner and will burn up in hell. Annabelle imagines that hell looks like the caverns she has never seen, filled with dark damp spaces and black bats with fangs flying upside down trying to bite her face off. But there is something thrilling about hell, too, about the idea of going down deep inside a cave and not coming back up, hiding down there where no one can find her, where she can live by a river that looks and tastes like Coke, and all her Barbies will lie naked in a circle around her because she is the Queen Beautiful Lady Anna, and the pieces of shit men will be there and won’t be able to leave because they are chained-up slaves. And if Joe is stuck down there she will use a big bucket to pour water on him so the flames don’t hurt so much.
But what if Grandpa is there, too, with his oxygen tank, wetting his pants? Annabelle looks around the church. She needs to get the Holy Spirit right away. But all she sees are the pews filled with people, and light through the stained glass windows above them, and Jesus hanging on the big cross in his diaper, looking like he is asleep.
After church they go to Sue’s Kitchen for lunch. Annabelle is wearing her pink dotted Swiss dress and Communion shoes, and her mother is dressed up and has used rollers in her hair so it has waves in it. Her mother orders Salisbury steak and gravy. Annabelle gets fried chicken and is allowed to have lime Jello for dessert. She drinks her milk with a straw, blowing pale white bubbles into the glass.
“What a sweet little angel,” someone says.
Annabelle looks up. A man is standing next to their booth, a big pink-cheeked man with a neat black beard and no hair on his head. He has large, fleshy lips that make her think of the wax ones the Walmart sells at Halloween.
“She sure is a beauty,” the man says, but he is looking at her mother, not Annabelle. He leans both hands on their table, meaty hands with big hairy knuckles and long fingers and—she counts them quickly—six rings.
“Sweet!” her mother says. “Stubborn as a mule, is what she is.”
Annabelle is surprised by how her mother says it; her voice is soft as a melted butter pat.
“Her mother ain’t bad, neither,” the man says. His voice is a butter knife, slipping in easily, smearing the butter around on soft bread.
Annabelle slides down the back of the leather booth until her feet are way under the table and her head is on the seat, and squinches her eyes shut.
“You raising her alone?” the man says.
“With God’s help.”
This is the first Annabelle has heard about God helping out.
“I can’t say I’m a believer, myself,” the man says, “though sometimes I figure there must be something else out there. I mean, all that space, there’s got to be, right? Even if it’s only little green men with bug eyes.”
Annabelle’s mother laughs, and Annabelle pictures green men the size of ants, crawling out of an anthill.
“I envy those who have faith,” the man says.
“Well, to each his own,” her mother says. “I believe everyone should get along.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting along with you,” the man says, and Annabelle thinks about the green man-ants swarming up the ramp into Grandpa’s trailer, crawling along his wheelchair and into his eyes and nose and ears, starting to eat him alive.
The man stands there talking to her mother for what seems like forever.
“I have to pee,” Annabelle says. Her mother just waves her hand, so Annabelle goes by herself. When she comes out, the man is gone. She follows her mother out to their van.
“He’s going to come by the motel,” her mother says. “He usually stays at the Days Inn, but they don’t have free HBO like we do, and all they serve for breakfast are bad donuts, and we have those cinnamon buns from Sue’s. Do you want one tomorrow? You can have one tomorrow.” Her mother babbles on, the way she did when she was taking those green and white pills to help her stop eating. They didn’t work; she just ate and talked all day and cried harder at night.
When they get to the motel her mother goes back to work in the dress she wore to church, instead of changing into sweatpants and a T-shirt like she usually does, and Annabelle leans forward on the couch looking at Sam in his cage, poking her finger in to touch him.
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