do?”
“Weeeee,
I’m afraid, are out of options. I’ve held them off for six months longer than they should’ve been held off. I really put my job on the line. Farm girl.” He smiled at her, his hands clasped on his knees. She wanted to scratch him. The mattresses started screeching in the other room, and Patty knew Debby was jumping on the bed, her favorite game, bouncing from one bed to the next to the next in the girls’ room.
“Patty, the only way to fix this is money. Now. If you want to keep this place. I’m talking borrow, beg, or steal. I’m saying time is over for pride. So: How badly do you want this farm?” The mattress springs bounced harder. The eggs in Patty’s belly turned. Len kept smiling.
Libby Day
NOW
A fter my mother’s head was blown off, her body axed nearly in two, people in Kinnakee wondered whether she’d been a whore. At first they wondered, then they assumed, then it became a loose jingle of fact. Cars had been seen at the house at strange times of night, people said. She looked at men the way a whore would. In these situations, Vern Evelee always remarked that she should have sold her planter in ’83, as if that was proof she was prostituting herself.
Blame the victim, naturally. But the rumors turned so substantial: everyone had a friend who had a cousin who had another friend who’d fucked my mom. Everyone had some bit of proof: they told of a mole on the inside of her thigh, a scar on her right buttock. I don’t think the stories can be true, but like so much from my childhood, I can’t be sure. How much do you remember from when you were seven? Photos of my mother don’t reveal a wanton woman. As a teenage girl, hair shooting from her ponytail like fireworks, she was the definition of nice looking, the kind of person who reminds you of a neighbor or an old babysitter you always liked. By her twenties, with one or two or four kids clambering up her, the smile was bigger,but hassled, and she was always leaning away from one of us. I picture her as constantly under siege by her children. The sheer weight of us. By her thirties there weren’t many photos of her at all. In the few that exist, she’s smiling in an obedient fashion, one of those take-the-dang-photo smiles that will disappear with the camera flash. I haven’t looked at the photos in years. I used to paw at them obsessively, studying her clothes, her expression, whatever was in the background. Looking for clues: Whose hand is that on her shoulder? Where is she? What occasion is it? When I was still a teenager, I sealed them away, along with everything else.
Now I stood looking at the boxes as they slouched under my staircase, apologetic. I was gearing up to reacquaint myself with my family. I’d brought Michelle’s note to the Kill Club because I couldn’t bear to actually open those boxes, instead I’d reached into one cardboard corner where the tape was loose, and that’s the first thing I pulled out, a pathetic carnival game. If I was really going to take this on, if I was really going to think about the murders after all these careful years spent doing just the opposite, I needed to be able to look at basic household possessions without panicking: our old metal egg-beater that sounded like sleigh bells when you turned it fast enough, bent knives and forks that had been inside my family’s mouths, a coloring book or two with defined crayoned borders if it was Michelle’s, bored horizontal scrawls if it was mine. Look at them, let them just be objects.
Then decide what to sell.
To the Kill Creeps, the most desired items from the Day home are unavailable. The 10-gauge shotgun that killed my mom—her goose gun—is snug away in some evidence drawer, along with the axe from our toolshed. (That was another reason Ben got convicted: those weapons were from our house. Outside killers don’t arrive at a sleeping home with limp hands, just hoping to find convenient murder weapons.) Sometimes I tried to
“Weeeee,
I’m afraid, are out of options. I’ve held them off for six months longer than they should’ve been held off. I really put my job on the line. Farm girl.” He smiled at her, his hands clasped on his knees. She wanted to scratch him. The mattresses started screeching in the other room, and Patty knew Debby was jumping on the bed, her favorite game, bouncing from one bed to the next to the next in the girls’ room.
“Patty, the only way to fix this is money. Now. If you want to keep this place. I’m talking borrow, beg, or steal. I’m saying time is over for pride. So: How badly do you want this farm?” The mattress springs bounced harder. The eggs in Patty’s belly turned. Len kept smiling.
Libby Day
NOW
A fter my mother’s head was blown off, her body axed nearly in two, people in Kinnakee wondered whether she’d been a whore. At first they wondered, then they assumed, then it became a loose jingle of fact. Cars had been seen at the house at strange times of night, people said. She looked at men the way a whore would. In these situations, Vern Evelee always remarked that she should have sold her planter in ’83, as if that was proof she was prostituting herself.
Blame the victim, naturally. But the rumors turned so substantial: everyone had a friend who had a cousin who had another friend who’d fucked my mom. Everyone had some bit of proof: they told of a mole on the inside of her thigh, a scar on her right buttock. I don’t think the stories can be true, but like so much from my childhood, I can’t be sure. How much do you remember from when you were seven? Photos of my mother don’t reveal a wanton woman. As a teenage girl, hair shooting from her ponytail like fireworks, she was the definition of nice looking, the kind of person who reminds you of a neighbor or an old babysitter you always liked. By her twenties, with one or two or four kids clambering up her, the smile was bigger,but hassled, and she was always leaning away from one of us. I picture her as constantly under siege by her children. The sheer weight of us. By her thirties there weren’t many photos of her at all. In the few that exist, she’s smiling in an obedient fashion, one of those take-the-dang-photo smiles that will disappear with the camera flash. I haven’t looked at the photos in years. I used to paw at them obsessively, studying her clothes, her expression, whatever was in the background. Looking for clues: Whose hand is that on her shoulder? Where is she? What occasion is it? When I was still a teenager, I sealed them away, along with everything else.
Now I stood looking at the boxes as they slouched under my staircase, apologetic. I was gearing up to reacquaint myself with my family. I’d brought Michelle’s note to the Kill Club because I couldn’t bear to actually open those boxes, instead I’d reached into one cardboard corner where the tape was loose, and that’s the first thing I pulled out, a pathetic carnival game. If I was really going to take this on, if I was really going to think about the murders after all these careful years spent doing just the opposite, I needed to be able to look at basic household possessions without panicking: our old metal egg-beater that sounded like sleigh bells when you turned it fast enough, bent knives and forks that had been inside my family’s mouths, a coloring book or two with defined crayoned borders if it was Michelle’s, bored horizontal scrawls if it was mine. Look at them, let them just be objects.
Then decide what to sell.
To the Kill Creeps, the most desired items from the Day home are unavailable. The 10-gauge shotgun that killed my mom—her goose gun—is snug away in some evidence drawer, along with the axe from our toolshed. (That was another reason Ben got convicted: those weapons were from our house. Outside killers don’t arrive at a sleeping home with limp hands, just hoping to find convenient murder weapons.) Sometimes I tried to
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