tried to avoid.
“Oh, I’d hit you if I wanted,” Delia said, and they left it at that.
Mathew used to tease her about it. “What’s so funny?” he’d say. “Why you laughing
now?”
And that always got her laughing in wilder spurts. She’d shrug or close her eyes and bite her tongue until it stung. That was the marker—pain—what it took to stop. And he just eyed her, chuckled, never lost himself in a fit like Terry. Once she bit the corner of her tongue so hard she started crying and couldn’t stop. “What’s wrong?” Mathew said, but she just balled up on the bed and sucked at the blood, shut his hands out rubbing, rubbing and trying to soothe, shut out everything except Terry and Everett, their laughing swirling through her in wave after wave.
“I only take healthy people out,” the older brother said. “It’s a difficult trip.”
“To where? I need to get to Chicago.”
“Chicago,” he said, and nodded.
“I don’t have any diseases.” She giggled, could hear her mother—
What will they do with you, Jenny? This is serious. Stop now
. Jennifer bit down on her tongue, and the sun curled into the afternoon haze, no longer splitting a purple light along their faces. The younger brother stepped forward.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Checking.” He threw his hands up, opened them—nothing, nothing to hide, not even specks of dust. Then he let them down and stared at her shoes, up her pants leg, his stare sealing her inside the thick fabric, rendering her motionless. Her stomach breathed in and out, the dirty T-shirt where her baby rested, then he touched Jennifer’s shoulder, pushed it too hard and she pushed back.
“Don’t push on me.”
His hands went up in surrender again. “No trouble,” he said, and turned to get a better look at her teeth. She shut her mouth, watched him, his curly hair, the smooth flatness of his face down from his eye and nose.
The refugees were behind her, but the man was so near, and the sliver of glass Jennifer had taken off Highway 11 was too deep in her pocket to reach for.
“Your wrist, it’s okay?” He reached out for her wrist and she let him take it. There was a bruise in the center and one at the bend in her elbow from carrying the box. He rubbed over the center bruise, held her lightly, rubbed as if trying to figure out the dimensions, trying to find a break in the skin, decide if this bruise was somehow dangerous, the surface an indicator of something rotting inside at the core—like an apple, she thought, and wondered what soap he used and where in Birmingham was there enough water for a shower. Maybe it was the history he was looking for, what happened between Jennifer and her mother, all those years between then and now.
Pull away
, she told herself,
Get out of here
, but he was holding her gingerly.
“Healthy,” he said, and smiled and walked over to his brother.
“I’ll take you to Chicago for the money. How much do you have?” his brother asked.
“I don’t have any,” she changed her words.
“When can you get it?”
“I said I don’t have any,” and Jennifer found a seam, slipped into the line of bodies, slipped as easily as the man had held her arm.
“I’ll take you without the money,” the older brother shouted, but Jennifer kept walking. She spotted the American flag above the entrance to the consulate—the exit was to the right, and the crowd seemed to turn like a compass, its directions shifting slightly north toward south, then swooning the other way, recalibrating around her, the center needle, the tornado eye, shifting, shifting. Someone reached a hand out, pulled, but she sped up and started running toward the exit like running in water, stepping over bloated ankles and the yellow cans and shawls people left on the ground, bodies rolled in dirt, the dead trees. She looked behind her, kept checking—the two men weren’t coming.
She didn’t feel safe until she got to the gate where the Red Cross
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Sex Retreat [Cowboy Sex 6]