and a smile from a seventy-something age-spotted man with orthopedic shoes and a heavy limp. He offers me a cart and I decline, making my way straight to the cleaning supply section and grabbing one bottle of multipurpose cleaner, a box of wet mopping cloths, and yellow latex gloves. The lines are long; children are fussing and leaning out of carts, reaching for candy planted enticingly nearby. I don’t care to interact with anyone and use the self-checkout at the far end of the store.
The image of the crickets in the jar remains with me, even though I no longer ponder the logical reason as to its existence. I am realizing that most of my mother’s peculiarities cannot be explained by a sane mind. As I make my way back to the entrance, I pass a bank, a customer service counter, and a Western Union. On the wall that separates the restrooms, I see a poster dotted with pictures of children of all ages, declaring that Every Second Counts. I step closer. Individual pages behind document protectors are thumbtacked to a large blue board. I do the math; altogether there are eighty-four pages. Every page has a picture of a child, a name, gender, age, height, weight, eye, and hair color. This child was last seen on, then a date, sometimes a description of the circumstances—disappeared walking home from school or didn’t return from a friend’s house—and some have an additional age-progressed picture. I scan the missing dates and realize they reach as far back as ten years. Just a few of the pictures have a red Located banner across them.
I wonder where they are. Have they willingly abandoned their families or are some held captive? I cannot conceive of the fact that so many people, children at that, just float around somewhere, on the fringes of society, forgotten, abandoned, and written off. Those who are no longer alive ended up … where? In basements, ditches, hidden graves? Washed up on shores, floating on ocean surfaces in plastic bags? Hidden somewhere in basements just to be recovered decades later, in shallow graves in backyards? Or buried in some woods, underneath branches, shed leaves, bark, acorn caps and other vegetative debris in various stages of decomposition.
The images of missing children overlap and tilt my mind; suddenly I sense a zigzag pattern, like a contorted screen between my eyes and the physical world. I see flashing lights and my skin starts prickling. It begins in my fingertips and travels slowly up my arm and my shoulder blades, all the way up to my temples. As they start pulsating, I feel as if I am on my back in a field of prickly grass or some golden yellow crop that suddenly turns black right in front of my eyes. It grows all around me, tingling and pinching my skin. I want to scratch my entire body but my hands won’t cooperate and then billions of spores fly off the black crop and I can no longer breathe. The world around me is shrouded in hot and aromatic pungency and trying to escape this odor is like trying not to smell food cooking on a stove. I desperately bury my face into the crook of my elbow to make it stop, to escape this almost resinous compound. The scent reminds me of a place I can’t be sure of, for I don’t recall the location itself, but I stand barefoot on rough wood, a porch maybe, peeling away squeaky corn husks and handfuls of silk.
By the time I get home, the feeling has dissipated. The Texas summer sky is a doodle of colors, hesitant brushstrokes at best. The sun is about to set and the entire picture will soon turn into a canopy of luminous stars; minute specks of light will shine within the blackness.
I have never hulled the husk of an ear of corn in my life. Not that I know of. Just like the snow blizzard, maybe this is all just my brain misfiring?
Memphis
Days ago, when, through the peephole, Memphis laid eyes on the distorted bodies of two police officers standing in front of her door, the first crack had appeared. This is it, she had thought, now it all comes to an end.
That night, on a whim, when she had left the house and had tried to find the farm again—merely wanting to know if it was still standing, still out there at the end of a dirt road with its barn and shed—she had lost her purse. Just like that; it was in her hand one moment, gone the next. At first she hadn’t noticed, but once she did, she didn’t dwell on it. She was preoccupied with the scent of the night and the memories that rushed toward her.
Not a single car passed her as she made her way down the road. It was cool, at least in relation to the three-digit daytime temperatures, and her legs moved all on their own as if they were on a mission. Before she knew it, she was on the outskirts of Aurora, on FM 2410, and it seemed as if those three miles took her less than an hour to walk.
Thirty years had passed since she had left the farm, maybe more; she wasn’t so sure anymore. The departure had been hasty and unorganized and she had left everything she owned behind. After their time on the road, she’d lived right here in town, yet she had never been back, never so much as looked at it from afar, not until the police had come to her door.
She had been unprepared for the police, hadn’t even heard them approach. Too many cars passed by the house, too many doors slammed, too many children went to school or walked home, rapping twigs against fences, screaming and running and laughing. Over the years she had let her guard down, especially since Dahlia had left town. There had been over fifteen years or so without Dahlia, years she had lived alone, working menial jobs, and during those years she had become less vigilant.
She loved cleaning houses the most—the people were usually at work and money was left on some foyer table for her to collect—she enjoyed the solitude and she’d imagine those houses were her home and she’d walk in and for a split second she’d picture Dahlia as a child, running through the hallways, playing in backyards, so far removed from what reality had been.
The care of the elderly was also something she didn’t mind, mostly Alzheimer’s patients, still capable of living with their families, not so far gone that they needed 24/7 supervision. She’d play the radio as she cooked for them, did the laundry—sometimes she’d sit and read books she found somewhere on a nearby shelf, and then she’d imagine that one day she’d be one of them and Dahlia would care for her the way she cared for these strangers. She watched their old wrinkled faces, eyelids drooping over their eyes, staring off into space. At times she was jealous. Not having any worries, any consideration for people watching them, not fearing the doorbell, not dreading the ringing of the phone. Compared to what she had been through, their existence was bliss.
So yes, her guard had been down and when the police showed up, when she saw the uniforms, every muscle in her body went tight, preparing for her escape. Her brain shouted at her, Run run run, her mind a merry-go-round of fears, and with every turn another thought developed, one more disturbing than the last.
“Are you Memphis Waller?” the female officer had asked.
Memphis stood in silence. Frozen. Then she nodded.
“This is about your daughter.”
Memphis still couldn’t move, stood in the doorway to keep the officers from entering.
“Your daughter,” the officer then said, “is at Metroplex. Don’t worry, she is fine. She’s just being looked over right now. If you want to, we’ll give you a ride to the hospital?”
It wasn’t easy to shut off the adrenaline and so she just stood there blocking the door; she couldn’t move an inch.
“Are you all right? May we come in?” the second officer, also a woman, asked and leaned in slightly.
She would have asked them in if she had had any power over her body, but she was reduced to a pillar of salt. The officers all but pushed her aside and entered the house, looked around, nosy and prying, intruded into the dining room, even up the stairs, as if it was any of their business. After they’d left, she sat with her heart beating out of her chest. It wouldn’t stop thrashing and at times her own reflection in a window prompted her to call out, Who’s there?, and she’d stand still and so did the shadow, and then she’d move and so did the shadow, and she realized she couldn’t trust her own eyes. She had looked out of the window and seen shapes moving across the yard; then a branch swiped against a window, making