Over Yonder, page 2
He saw it all right. He saw North Knoxville Medical Center just as they were passing the exit.
Tater shouted a colorful word beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet. He stamped on the brake and shifted into reverse in the middle of traffic. Soon he was heading backward in the intersection, moving against the flow. Horns blared. Cars swerved. Motorists extended hands from open windows and introduced Tater to the Tennessee state bird.
“Are you crazy? What’re you doing?”
“Will you put down that stupid book and pay attention?” he demanded as they wheeled through traffic, butts first. “You’re supposed to be looking at the GPS, not reading a freaking book while I drive.”
Tater spun the wheel and screeched into the parking lot of North Knoxville Medical Center on two wheels. He barely avoided colliding with one Tesla, one Land Rover, and one little boy in a wheelchair.
The car came to a jarring halt, and Gary the goldfish’s travel aquarium nearly fell off the dashboard. Caroline caught his temporary home with her foot. Gary traveled in a Hellmann’s jar. Gary went everywhere Caroline went.
“We can’t park here,” Caroline said. “This is a handicap spot.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just hurry up.”
“You’ve got to move.”
“Relax. They won’t do nothing to us. This is a hospital.” He threw the gearshift into Neutral and yanked the parking brake to underline his point. Case closed. The male hath spoketh. Long live the male.
They just stared at each other.
She sighed, then placed Gary’s jar into her backpack carefully, using library books to cushion the jar on all sides.
“I really think you should move the car,” she said. “This is illegal, and it’s not fair.”
“It’s not a big deal. I’m allowed to park here. My dad’s on full disability, and I’m a member of his medium family. It’s legit, Caroline.”
“Immediate family.”
“Exactly.”
Caroline kicked open the door and slung the backpack over her shoulder. She looked at Tater the way a kindergarten teacher looks with pity upon a kid who just pooped his pants in class.
“If you get a ticket, I’m warning you, I am going to be positively choleric.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Let’s not find out.”
“Why don’t you never speak English to me?”
“Sorry. I only speak English with members of my medium family.”
Her own remark struck her as deeply hilarious. But she stifled her laugh because there was nothing Tater hated more than being laughed at, except for, perhaps, gainful employment.
“You think you’re so much smarter than me,” he said. “You and your stupid goldfish. Well, I got news for you—you ain’t near as smart as you think you is. You’re just sorry white trash like the rest of us.”
“Well said, Stephen Hawking.”
“Buzz off.”
“Don’t be upset because you don’t know who Stephen Hawking is.”
He slapped a hand on the dash. “Did you hear what I just called you, White Trash? Ain’t no amount of reading that can fix being trash.”
Unfazed, she leaned into the car and pinched his nipple hard enough to squish a cashew. “Put on a shirt. Your nips are turning blue.”
“Dammit, Caroline!” Tater said, shielding his vulnerable areolas.
She fastened her hair into a ponytail and checked her face in the side mirror. Her state of dress embarrassed her. She was braless, wearing double T-shirts to make up for the lack of maternity undergarments. The overshirt was a Snoop Dogg T-shirt that belonged to her boyfriend, worn inside out so the world wouldn’t see Snoop broadcasting his middle finger to the photographer. The shirt hung on her frame with all the charm of an unfurled parachute. But it was the only shirt that fit her pregnant body.
“I’m not skipping the water bill again,” she said. “I’m done bathing outside in this freezing weather. I’m not paying your parking ticket. You’re going to have to get an actual job.”
Tater worked part-time for his cousin’s start-up power washing venture. Business had been slow for the past three or four presidential administrations. Caroline, on the other hand, worked at the Super 8 off I-75. And she worked nights at Walmart stocking shelves.
“Now go find another parking place or so help me . . .”
He scoffed. “Or so help you what?”
“Don’t tempt me, Tater. I’m serious.”
“What’re you going to do, leave me?”
She did not answer.
“You going to live under an overpass? Maybe a carboard box? You going to squat in some back alley somewhere and go to the bathroom against a brick wall? No, wait. I know. Maybe you could live behind Bath and Body Works.”
Caroline was about to answer him, but she was worried if she spoke her voice might crack. Then she lobbed his iPhone at him. It was a direct hit. The phone bounced off his sternum, and he slammed the door behind her as hard as he could. The bullet-hole window crack grew three inches.
And she walked toward the hospital, crunching in the snow.
* * *
Caroline’s mother’s hospital room was nondescript. White walls. White floors. Vinyl upholstered chairs, torn and scuffed by too many visitors whose collective butts had squashed the cushions into pancake submission. Typical medical room decor. Corporate quaint. Like the interior of an IRS holding cell but with bedside toilets.
Caroline’s mother was asleep in the bed. Her mother’s boyfriend, Jack Jr., was sitting by the window, slumped in a chair, scrolling TikTok and watching a barrage of videos involving thong underwear. The room TV was blaring Divorce Court at a volume loud enough to change the migratory patterns of waterfowl.
He did not acknowledge Caroline’s presence. When she approached the bed, she felt her composure start to fade. She had not seen her mother in a year. And things had changed considerably since her diagnosis.
Melinda Boyer was fifty-seven years old, but she looked ninety-seven today. She was bald, wearing one of those caps cancer patients wear. She had always been skinny, but now she was a ghost.
Her mother awoke slowly and focused her weary stare on the bouquet of white carnations Caroline carried in her hand. Then her gaze moved toward Caroline’s midsection. The woman spoke with a slack jaw and labored voice.
“Oh my God, you’re pregnant.”
Caroline’s emaciated mother struggled to sit upright and looked like she was going to break apart beneath the effort. “Who knocked you up? Please tell me it wasn’t that idiot named after a potato.”
“How are you, Mama?”
“How the hell’s it look like I am?” Her mother snapped her fingers and held out her hand. “Did you bring them?”
Caroline reached into her backpack and withdrew a carton of Marlboro Blacks. Her mother yanked the cigarettes from Caroline’s hand, then peeled the plastic packaging using her teeth.
“What about my lighter?” she asked, spitting plastic.
“All you said on the phone was cigarettes. I thought you’d already have a lighter.”
Her mother fell back into her pillow. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the donkey too, Caroline. You think they let me have a lighter in this place? Stupid, stupid girl.”
The woman snapped her fingers at her boyfriend. “Jack Jr., go find me a lighter.”
Jack Jr. wasn’t paying attention.
So Caroline’s mother threw the cigarettes at Jack Jr. They hit him in the face. “I said find me a lighter, loser.”
Ah, amor.
Jack Jr. took several whole minutes to lumber to his feet.
“While we’re young!” Melinda threw a sugar packet at him. Then a spoon. Caroline thought her mother would throw her entire meal tray at him too, but evidently Melinda was showing some restraint today.
Her mother had been with Jack Jr. longer than any other boyfriend. They had been on again and off again, at varying degrees of on- and off-ness, for several years. Her mom’s boyfriend was cut from the same cloth as Tater, only older, with silver in his hair. He had a brown tattoo of a coiled snake on the back of his neck. The snake was supposed to be the timber rattler from the Don’t Tread On Me flag but instead looked more like evidence of a healthy colon.
Caroline pulled a chair up to her mother’s bed. The sound of Divorce Court filled the uncomfortable silence between them. TV had often done that when they were together. Like grout filling in all the cracks.
Caroline and her mother absently watched the screen, avoiding any actual talking.
Caroline muted the TV.
“Tell me how you’ve been, Mama.”
“Oh, just wonderful,” her mother said. “Look at me. Livin’ the dream.”
“Well, what’s been happening?”
“Well, let’s see. Last night we had a soufflé and a floor show. Tonight we’re going to have an ice cream buffet and a sunset cruise. Geez, Caroline.”
Nobody said anything. Her mother unmuted the TV, then coughed into a napkin. The napkin turned pink with blood. Pancreatic cancer was no way to go.
“When are they saying you can go home?” Caroline asked.
“They aren’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going home. Least not through the front door.”
Caroline looked into her lap. Her eyes began to get blurry with tears.
“I don’t have long,” her mother finally said. “I might not even have this week.”
“Mama.”
Melinda cranked up the volume. Divorce Court had turned into a wrestling match. They both watched the screen to keep from watching each other. Caroline thought daytime television represented about 80 percent of their relationship.
“But I’m glad you’re here,” her mother said, reaching out to touch her daughter’s hand. “Because I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
They were interrupted when Jack Jr. entered the room. “Hey, no lighter, but I found a butane torch,” he said, bearing a canister torch that was about the size of a thermos.
“Where did you find a butane torch in a hospital?” asked Melinda.
“The maintenance closet.”
The torch had an electric ignitor switch. The butane hissed to life and a blue flame roared. Using this to light a Marlboro would have been akin to using a wrecking ball to secure a thumbtack. But any port in a storm.
Melinda Boyer removed the oxygen cannula from her face. She tossed back the sheets to reveal her bony frame. Her knees looked like soft balls attached to femurs.
The woman attempted to crawl out of bed and almost face-planted. “Someone get me out of this bed. I need to smoke before I die.”
Chapter 3
Caroline was three when her mother was first arrested for possession. The incident happened in a Kmart parking lot. Caroline was too young to remember the entirety of it all, but she still recalled the highlights. She could remember, for example, riding in the shopping buggy as they exited Kmart. She remembered that it was sunny. Her red hair in pigtails. Her mother was pushing the buggy, singing to herself. Caroline was happy in the memory because her mother let her have a strawberry milkshake, back when Kmart served food.
She also remembered seeing all the cop cars parked around her mother’s Pontiac Trans. She remembered the blue lights flashing, lighting up daylight. She remembered that her mother was messed up on something—meth probably. Maybe oxy. If you were the child of an addict, you always knew when your parent was high.
Her mom freaked out when she saw the cops. The woman lost all sanity—and she hadn’t had much lucidity left to lose. Melinda Boyer let go of the cart and started running in the opposite direction. She had been just high enough to believe she could outrun cops.
The buggy with Caroline in it began rolling away, wheeling for the edge of the parking lot toward traffic. Caroline happily grasped her milkshake without knowing what was truly happening. She didn’t know she was rolling toward a busy highway as she sipped away, the streaks of highway vehicles whooshing before her vision.
The buggy slammed into a curb, and Caroline shot out of the seat. The milkshake somersaulted through the air, landing on the pavement with a pink splatter. Caroline still bore a scar from where her lower tooth had punctured the skin above her chin. For weeks she could squirt milk at unsuspecting victims through a tiny hole in her lower lip.
That same week Caroline became property of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and went into foster care. And it was only the beginning of what was to come.
Now Caroline wheeled her mother along the breezeway. Her mother was using the torch to light her cigarette and almost caught her gown on fire.
“Roll me over to those benches and tables,” her mother said.
Foster care is a lot like a bad habit; once you enter the system, you’re hooked for life. Most foster kids come and go from the system multiple times throughout their lives. Caroline went back into foster care three more times. She bounced between group foster homes like she was caught in a tragic pinball machine. Caroline’s case was particularly complicated because she had medical issues. She was 80 percent blind in her left eye. She’d had three heart operations and eleven other surgeries. Nobody wanted a kid with medical issues. Not even her own mother, who caused all this to begin with.
When Caroline’s mother got out of rehab the second time, Caroline tried moving back into her mother’s trailer. She was fourteen at the time. Caroline thought it might work. But it didn’t. One summer day, after a shower, she exited the bathroom wearing only a towel. Her mother’s boyfriend du jour, Larry, was standing in the door, staring at her. His eyes were strange. His grin was menacing, and his hand was in his pants. Later that afternoon he walked into Caroline’s room when she was changing her clothes. Caroline threw a lamp at him. Nothing happened, thankfully. But when Caroline’s mother found out about this, she was horrified. The only logical solution in her mother’s mind was to kick Caroline out.
So Caroline went back into foster care. She would technically remain in foster care until age eighteen. But at sixteen, she met a young man named after a starchy tuberous vegetable. The young man owned his own house, which his aunt had left him, so she moved in. Though they talked every once in a while, it had been a long time since Melinda and Caroline had been this close in proximity to each other.
Until today.
They were in the picnic area of the medical center, watching the snow fall. Her mother sat in a wheelchair looking into the iron sky. From this angle, Caroline could see Tater’s Honda in the parking lot in the distance, crookedly parked in the handicapped space.
Melinda offered Caroline a cigarette.
“No thanks,” said Caroline.
Her mother made a face. “Why? You quit?”
“I just don’t want one.”
Her mother looked at Caroline’s tummy, then flicked her lighter. She pointed to Caroline’s inner forearm. “You got a new tattoo.”
The tattoo was a sunflower. The sunflower was adorned with cursive text: Survive. Her mother inspected the inkwork. “You design it?”
“Yes.”
“Survive? What’s that supposed to mean?”
A gaggle of nurses passed them. The medical staffers all stole glances at the frail woman on the breezeway, sucking smoke from the cigarette. Their looks of disapproval were palpable.
“It’s not meant to be cryptic,” said Caroline.
“What exactly do you think you survived?” asked her mother.
“Does it matter?”
Her mother didn’t seem to care.
“You been by my house and fed my cats?”
“No.”
“You said you’d go.”
“Can’t Jack Jr. feed them?”
“No. He’s got the ankle bracelet thing.”
“Then how’s he even here?”
“He’s been living in Knoxville for the last three months with his brother.”
“He wasn’t living with you?”
“We’ve had issues. Promise me you’ll feed them.”
Caroline stared into the parking lot at the Honda, puffing its blue exhaust. “I said I’ll go. How many times do you want me to say it?”
Her mother seemed satisfied by her answer. She drew smoke inward, then exhaled it through her nostrils slowly. Melinda’s face was harder and more angular than Caroline had ever seen it.
Melinda Boyer absently played with a necklace she wore. The gold pendant was the timber rattlesnake from the Don’t Tread On Me flag. Same as on Jack Jr.’s neck.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” her mother said.
Her mother released another massive cloud, this one bigger than the former. Nicotine filled the air with the leathery, sweet smell Caroline had tasted in the womb. A smell she grew up with. A smell she both hated and enjoyed.
“Something to tell me?”
“Yeah.” Her mother kept playing with the necklace. “And don’t look at me like that, Caroline.”
“Like what?”
“You can never manage to hide your disappointment in me.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“You are not my mother, Caroline.”
The truth was, Caroline had always felt as though her mother were a sister. In many ways, a distant sister. Even from a young age Caroline had always seen herself as older than Melinda somehow.
Her mother released the gold pendant and was silent for a few moments. Melinda rolled her chair forward and touched her daughter’s hand. It was such a small act. But it was maybe the most affection Caroline had ever received from the woman.
“You don’t think I get it, Caroline? I screwed up your life. Believe me, I wish I could make it better. I wish I’d made different choices. Hell, I wish a lot of things. I know I made a mess of everything. I know I ruined your childhood.”
Melinda gripped her hand. Caroline looked at the veiny hand clasping hers. The skin like tissue paper.
“Please, Care Bear. Try to understand me. Put yourself in my shoes. I wasn’t always like this. I never meant to hurt anyone. Least of all you.”
