A Gracious Plenty (24 page)

Authors: Sheri Reynolds

“Shhh,” the mermaid shushed. “I don’t know you.” She adjusted her shoulders and jabbed at one of the shells of her bra, and Tessa Lee wondered if she had anything underneath that shell at all. Maybe the mermaid wasn’t her momma. Maybe she wasn’t real.

The mermaid composed her face, sat up taller, and gave her shoulders a wiggle. “I can’t have children,” she said. “All my children are fish.” And then she laughed a startling laugh, too loud for someone so shrunken, too rich.

The sound was completely familiar, and Tessa Lee could feel her face get hot. She touched her cheeks and touched her nose, and she could feel tiny blisters from the sunburn breaking, damp on her fingers as she rubbed them away. Her whole face was wet with sweat and blisters, and she couldn’t breathe.

“Momma,” she said. “Please,” and then she took off her backpack and pulled out the firefly cloak, hoping it would help her remember. Because maybe her momma’d been in an accident and had amnesia, and that’s why she’d never come back. Tessa Lee held it up for her momma to see. “Look,” she said, and she put on the firefly cloak, which fit her perfectly by then.

It was a faded navy blue velvety robe, with tiny gold fireflies glowing all over. Some of them were so gold they almost looked green, and when she held up her arms, the fabric made wings. Just putting it on made Tessa Lee feel stronger, gave her something to cloak herself with and make her feel safe.

But her momma sucked in a deep gasp, and when she let it out, she cried, “Nooooo,” long and hard. It was almost a shriek, almost a wailing. In an instant, there were people around Tessa Lee on the boardwalk, tourists and shopkeepers and the guy from the hot dog cart across the street, watching the mermaid, who kept crying. She put both hands on her face and wiped backward from her eyes until she’d pushed the wig far enough for everyone to see her bleached hair frizzing yellow beneath it. She smeared her mascara in thick swoops, and Tessa Lee was ashamed to see her like that.

People swarmed around the window, and one woman tapped on the glass and said, “Easy, honey,” and tried to calm her momma down as Tessa Lee backed to the edges of the crowd.

Then a door opened from the side of the wax museum, and a man with thick gold chains around his neck and hair like a rusty Brillo pad sauntered up to the window and said, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He looked official. He had a cell phone on his belt and a knife in a little holster with a swinging golden chain.

Her momma was gasping, like she was choking. She looked a little like her granny right after Travis died, when she got too worked up and Rosie Jo had to put a paper bag over her nose to keep her from hyperventilating. Her momma kept shaking her head, wheezing “No, no,” her voice already hoarse.

The guy from the hot dog cart pointed to Tessa Lee and said, “That gal right there’s the one who riled her up, Reggie.”

“Her?” the man asked, and Tessa Lee looked away and started stuffing the firefly cloak back into her backpack. She wanted to run, but she hadn’t even told her momma about Travis.

“Yeah,” the hot dog guy said. “I saw her. She was doing some kinda voodoo or something, whispering and putting on a robe.”

The zipper on her backpack got caught in the fabric, and Tessa Lee forced it, blushing, trying not to look at all the people who were looking at her, puzzled and accusing.

“What are you harassing my employees for?” Reggie asked. “Get outta here, you little punk,” and he took a step toward Tessa Lee, like he was running her off, like she was a raccoon in his garbage. But before Tessa Lee had a chance to bolt, her momma let out another big cry, and she couldn’t just leave with her momma crying.

“Holy shit,” the guy from the hot dog cart said and laughed, and Reggie shook his head like nothing in the whole world made sense. He grabbed Tessa Lee by the arm, and when he did, her momma howled again.

Tessa Lee tried to yank her arm away. She almost yelled out “Travis got killed,” but that seemed like the wrong way to break the news, especially when her momma was already so upset, and besides that, she didn’t want to say Travis’s name out loud if her momma was just going to deny she knew him.

Before she had a chance to do anything, Reggie shouted back to the mermaid, “Straighten up in there! Cut off the light and go clean up your face. I mean it!”

And in a flash, just that fast, the picture window went dark inside. The mermaid disappeared, and Tessa Lee’d missed her opportunity. People on the boardwalk oohed and laughed and began to disperse.

Tessa Lee tried to wiggle her arm away, but the man grabbed her tighter.

“You’re hurting me,” she said, not quietly.

“You shut up,” he said under his breath, and he pulled her down the block, his fingers tight on her arm.

“Let me go,” Tessa Lee demanded. “That’s my momma. I’ve gotta talk to her.”

Reggie paused, looked down at her, and laughed. He had on sunshades, so she wasn’t sure where he was looking, but she thought he might be looking at her breasts.

“You can’t talk to her right now,” he replied, but he relaxed his grip a little. They turned the corner and moved toward an amusement park. “I got a business to run,” he said. “Can’t have any whacked-out mermaids screaming at the customers, you understand?”

“But she’s my momma,” Tessa Lee insisted. There was bile in her throat. Her heart was rising, fluttering. She needed some crushed ice.

“Whether she is or whether she ain’t, she’s on the job right now,” the man said.

Tessa Lee clenched her teeth to keep from crying. “I’ve waited a long time to see her,” she whispered. Then she tightened every muscle and pulled herself into the darkness at her center, where none of it could touch her, where there was no need to give up because there was nothing else to lose.

The man with his fingers still clamping her arm said, “She gets off at 11:00, and you can talk to her then. But I don’t wanna see you back on that block before. You hear me?”

When Tessa Lee didn’t reply, he grabbed her chin and held it up, and he pulled his face down close to her, so close she could see the clogged black pores on his nose.

“You hear me?” he repeated. “If I see your face again before 11:00, I’ll call somebody to come get you. Or better yet, I might put you to work for me.” He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth, then swatted her hard on her bottom. “You mark my word,” he said.

Tessa Lee started walking in the other direction. She didn’t have anywhere to go, but that didn’t stop her. She wiped her mouth off hard with the back of her hand and marched on.