are you sure?”
“The line was blue, Libby . Both times.”
“No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”
“No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”
“I don’t like that word so much. There needs to be a different word.” She looked at me sideways, squinting her eyes because of the flying snow, which was picking up. “Libby, please?”
A few geese flew above us, honking. Pigs were slamming at their feeder. The phone was ringing inside, which meant Kay would be a bit longer.
I asked her, “Please what?”
She said, “Please help me.”
The sky was an enormous arc of gray-white, like dull metal. White snow spun by and everything got blurry and silenced. The world was hushed, just like the way things quiet down before something big bursts into the air.
TWO
Miguel Mendoza is standing out in the middle of the highway, in front of his trailer, waving his arms for me to stop.
“Miguel,” I say when I pull the car over. “I gotta get to work. I’m late.”
“Libby, thank God I didn’t miss you. I got to get to work too. My car’s broke down.”
“Where’s Juan?”
“With his abuelita. I was driving him in this morning and my car just stops, just dies, right there on the highway, and I hiked the last two miles with him on my shoulders—fuck—and left him at his grandma’s and I called to have the car towed in and hitched back here, and now I’m very late for work. Gracias a diós.” When he’s settled in the car, he makes a sign of a cross. “Now I’m carless in the middle of nowhere, híjole, that’s just great. This is just not the right part of the world to be broke in. Good thing there’s you. I figured you’d be heading to work. Shit.” He rubs the sides of his face with his palms. “Fuck.”
“I picked up a lady hitchhiking to Lamar last week. Her car was broke down too. Her daughter had just gone to the doctor for eating pennies.” I have to say this loud, because by now we’re going sixty and the windows are rolled down since it’s burning-hell hot even though it’s early June, and the wind is roaring around in the car, bouncing around and slamming into our eardrums. “The pennies were on the floor because her vacuum doesn’t work. She was working extra shifts to pay for the doctor. She was hitchhiking to work because of pennies, a vacuum, a doctor, a daughter, and because her car was broke down. Hitchhiking all the way to Lamar, that’s crazy. You smell like pot. Do you know anybody named Clark? Because that’s the name of the guy Tess took off with. I don’t know nothing about him. But Tess drove off with him yesterday and now I’m a little worried.”
He looks down at his shirt and lifts it from his body a few times, like that will shake the pot smell away, and then stares up at the ceiling of my car and closes his eyes. “Tess left?”
“Yeah. She just drove off with this guy. I’d met him before, but I didn’t really pay attention, because I didn’t think he mattered. Because I didn’t think he was going to drive off with her, you know.”
“Who’s watching the kid?” He’s talking loud too and he leans way over to me so we don’t have to try so hard, which helps the noise situation quite a lot.
“Right now? Kay. She’s going to watch her while I’m at work. I took care of her all last night, though. She’s mine now, I guess. Can you believe that? I have a baby.”
I’m busy driving but I glance at him sideways in time to see his jaw, which is right next to me, tighten underneath his skin.
“Did Tess tell you she was leaving?”
I bite my lip. There’s a lot of answers to that question, and I don’t know which is most true. Yes. No. Maybe. She used to say she was leaving the minute she graduated high school. But sometimes, when I told her that maybe we could rent a place in Lamar together, she’d agree to that. When I said that maybe the two of us could move to Denver or something together, she’d agreed to that. And after she was pregnant, we talked through other ideas, too. People’ll do that to you, sometimes—agree to all sorts of scenarios, and I don’t think she meant to be confusing, it’s just that she didn’t know.
“I’m un poquito pissed off at mothers who leave their babies right now,” he says after he realizes I’m not going to answer his question with anything other than a shrug. “And no, I don’t know any guy named Clark. He from around here? From Lamar?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’d he look like?”
“I don’t know. Tess told me yesterday, ‘Libby, this fine gentleman is going to take me on a bit of a vacation,’ and he said, ‘Sure thing,’ and she said, ‘You know, I just got to get out of here for a while. I’ll write.’ He looked like a regular guy. He was big—not fat really, but big. He had black hair. They just drove off.”
After a pause, Miguel says, “My abuelita always said that there’s two kinds of people in this world, warm people and cold people. Sometimes they trick you. You think they’re cold but you find out that underneath they’re actually warm. They got a heart after all, and it’s a heart that goes outside itself, into the world. Then you got the people who come across as warm, but underneath they’re so damn cold and empty that it’s just scary. It’s true, you know. The people who seem warm but are cold. That’s Shawny for you. That’s Tess. From now on I’m only gonna deal with people who have some heat inside them—do you know what I mean Libby? Me comprendes?”
He’s caught me by surprise—Miguel’s not the sort to say something like this—so I say something dumb, which is, “I learned a trick, which is that you rub a baby’s lower lip with the nipple of the bottle and that’s how you get her to suck. Probably you already knew that.”
“I can’t remember that far back.” He says it slowly, as if he’s thinking about it.
“Do you remember how a baby takes that bottle like it’s the most serious thing, concentrating? Her eyes are always open, staring at my shirt, but it’s like she’s thinking of the milk, how it feels going down her throat. I think that’s amazing. She’s got the cutest toes. I can’t wait till she starts fitting into the outfits I bought her, especially this one with pastel bunny rabbits on it. I got that one at K-Mart. Kay said to me, ‘Lord, Libby, quit buying outfits because babies could care less what they wear,’ but I said, ‘That’s half the fun, Kay. You’re never wanting to have any fun,’ and Kay said, ‘Honey, it ain’t going to be fun like you think, this isn’t a baby doll to dress up. Save your money for stuff she needs.’”
Miguel smiles. “Kay’s right, for once.”
“Naw. I mean, I’ll save money and all. But I can buy Amber an outfit or two. Or pictures, which is another thing Kay got all worked up about. At the hospital, I got the most expensive portrait package and she yelled at me for an hour. She said, ‘Libby, who are all these pictures for?’ and I said, ‘Lots of people,’ and she said, ‘Libby, there are about four people on this earth that care that this baby was born,’ and I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Because Amber’s only a newborn baby once, you know. I got some extra pictures if you want one.”
“Sure, okay.”
“One of these days I’m going to get an apartment of my own and I won’t have to put up with Kay hollering at me all the time. Besides, I don’t know if she’s the best person to be taking care of Amber, but I guess it will be okay until I figure something else out.”
“You’re gonna need her. I’d stay on her good side.”
“There is no good side.”
“Then