Full of Grace Read online

  Sher’s not lying in my bed. And she’s not puking out the window. But, my bed’s been stripped of all the sheets and covers, and one is tied in a thick knot around the corner of my bed frame. I follow the knots of my bedding to the window and right over the ledge.

  The end of my bed sheet is swaying in the slight breeze, near the ground. Sher’s nowhere in sight. I haul in the sheets, so my neighbors don’t freak out, and I grab my car keys. Once I’m in my car, I dial Oscar, to ask his new wife if she’s got a little pregnant stowaway at her house.

  “She’s not here,” Hale tells me. “She probably went home. Her mom’s got to let her back in, Sher’s her only babysitter. It’s Apartment 22B. But listen to me, Landon...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sher’s my best friend. Best. Friend.”

  I chuckle. “You coming after me if this doesn’t work out, Hale?”

  “Oh no,” Hale laughs on the other end. “I couldn’t do a thing to you. But I’ll send Oscar.”

  Then, after she gives me directions to Sher’s mother’s apartment, OC jumps back on the other end to say, “You know I love you, buddy, so don’t screw up. You know I’d have to break your legs if my wife asked me to do it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I chuckle. “I’ll do my best to drag Sher back over to my place.”

  Oscar’s voice drops an octave. He’s either going to say something that he doesn’t want Hale to hear, or he’s trying to let me know something’s important. Or both.

  “Patience, Land,” he says. “That’s all it takes. I know from experience. It just takes a whole lot of patience.”

  ***

  Sher’s apartment complex is seedy. It’s the second week of October and warm enough that I’ve got the air conditioner going in my car, but there’s a guy tucked into a black hoodie that shrouds his face, at the entrance. I have to pull into the parking lot, which is surrounded by the u-shaped building. There’s a scattering of old ladies sitting on plastic chairs outside their doors and three teenagers, all dressed in black with a bunch of facial tackle, mulling around a door at the far corner on the top floor. It looks like the perfect place to get jumped.

  There are two levels and Hale said Sher’s apartment is 22B, which, I assume, has to be on the second floor. I lock up my car and climb the metal staircase. When I hit the top floor, the teens huddling at the opposite end of the walkway turn to look at me all at once, like a Gothic herd of pierced-up sheep.

  “Hey,” I say, with a two-finger wave. I scan the apartment doors. None have numbers on them. There are only shedding wreaths, dented doors, and filthy welcome mats to differentiate the dwellings.

  “You looking for Craig?” One of the teens asks, flicking his cigarette ashes over the railing. When I get close enough, I realize that not all three are as young as I thought. At least the one speaking to me isn’t. He’s got a bull-ring through his septum and about six in his face and he’s maybe five years older than the fourteen or fifteen year-old girl beside him. And who knows how much older than the freaky little androgynous thing smashed in the corner behind them.

  “Nope,” I say with a grin. Bull-Ring flicks more ashes over the rail. It’s probably raining on the old lady in the checkered housecoat who I saw sitting down below.

  “Julie?”

  Another grin. “Nope.”

  “Who you lookin’ for then?” The girl asks. She’s got gauges in her ears that are so big, I could probably pass my fist through them.

  “Sher,” I say.

  “Cowl or Traifere?”

  “There’s two of them?”

  “Uh, yeah,” the gauged girl rolls her eyes. I realize that I’m every bit as stupid as she’s thinking I am, even if not for the same reasons. I have no idea what Sher’s last name is. I don’t know a damn thing about her, except that she’s got skin like the underbelly of a baby rabbit and she’s carrying my baby—for the moment. We came together for maybe ten minutes total and it began this whole weird elbow pipe of our lives as strangers. What a mess.

  “Sher with all the brothers and sisters,” I finally say. It’s the only thing I can think of.

  “Traifere,” Bull-Ring says. He turns away from me. “Guess she’s turnin’ tricks now.”

  “Pardon?” I say. I even push a friendly-ish grin on my face, to let him know that I’m the friend that will grab that stupid silver ring he’s got jammed through the middle of his nose and use it to drag him around the complex, while I simultaneously kick his ass.

  But Bull-Ring obviously can’t read facial expressions, or muscles. He flicks away the butt of his cigarette and squares his shoulders to me, as if he’s something to worry about.

  “I said, she must be turnin’ tricks now. Why else’re you here? I had her a while ago and I can tell you, she ain’t worth it. She ain’t got a clue what she’s doing. But, at least, I didn’t have to pay.”

  “Didn’t you now?” I say, walking toward him. I quickly assess the railings of the balcony and the way the gauged girl stares at the back of Bull-Ring’s head, like he’s crazy. I also take in the androgynous black-covered thing, who has slid down against the wall and peers out into the apartment parking lot, as if the cops are going to drive up and start blasting at any second.

  Bull-Ring takes a step toward me.

  “You sure you want to do this?” I ask with a teasing grin.

  I don’t have time to give him my credentials because the kid yanks a pistol from his waist band. I don’t waste a second talking. I tuck in close, blocking his arm and twisting it, while also bending his wrist the wrong way. It happens all at once, like a Mangle-Me-Twister game, until Bull-Ring finally gives in to the excruciating pain racing up his arm and drops his gun.

  It’s a frackin’ Airsoft gun that fires plastic BBs. I should pop his elbow just to teach him a lesson about pointing guns at people. But, instead, I shout, “Look out below!” and kick it over the edge of the railing.

  The androgynous kid on the floor is still folded up, and the gauged girl is frozen, her mouth dangling as low as her holey earlobes.

  “Get off me, you sonofabitch!” Bull-Ring huffs and groans at once. I laugh at him.

  “Listen, kid,” I tell him, “if you want to keep your ass clear of my shoes, then I better never hear anything out of you about Sher Traifere, ever again.”

  Instead of answering, he whines. Then he says, “Ok, ok…I don’t give a shit about her! Just let me go already!”

  I let him go, pushing him away from me. I wait a minute to see if he’s planning on coming back for more, but he’s all set. He rubs his elbow and wrist alternately, but other than that, all he does is glare. That’s fine with me.

  “Which one is Sher’s apartment?” I ask and although he looks away sourly, the androgynous kid points and mutters, “It’s the one with the stupid yellow flowerpot.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THIS ISN’T GOING TO GO WELL. I know it even as I’m standing on the fake-grass welcome mat, looking at the faded tulips that have been shoved into a yellow sand bucket of pea gravel beside Sher’s door. I still knock, and a woman shrieks over the top of maybe a thousand shrieking little kids’ voices, “Somebody get that!”

  But the first one to get it, is the only one who knows me. And she doesn’t want to see me. She makes it obvious by how quick and how hard she slams the door in my face. I knock again. She opens the door an inch.

  “Go away, Landon!” she hisses through the crack.

  “Who the hell is that, Sher?” an older woman shouts from somewhere in the apartment. A smaller face, belonging to a stringy-haired girl that look like a younger version of Sher, flings back the side-window curtain to stare at me. Stringy doesn’t wave. But she picks her nose.

  “I came to get my sweats back.” I grin at Sher. I notice she’s wearing her own pants now and a wide, crocheted choker that hardly hides the hickey on her neck. She frowns.

  “Just go, okay? I’ll give them to Hale and Oscar.”

  “Who the hell, Sher?” A wom
an grabs the door and pulls it all the way open. She’s nothing like Sher. She has crazy red curls of hair, like a head full of snakes, skin as weathered as the bottom of my shoe, and a thin-lipped scowl that gives me shivers. She narrows her eyes on me. “Who’re you?”

  “My name’s Landon, ma’am. I’m a friend of Sher’s.”

  “Oh really?” She scowls even more and narrows her eyes until there’s nothing left but lashes. “Same friend that gave her that nasty blood clot on her neck?”

  I cough into my hand, suddenly embarrassed that I did it. “Yes ma’am. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Hell no, it shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s what I said,” Sher adds, fingering the choker, but her mother swings around and swats her.

  “And what were you doing, letting him? Didn’t I teach you nothing?”

  My hand is on the door. I get that this is Sher’s mom. I get that she’s annoyed with the whole hickey thing, but she’s not going to hit Sher in front of me either.

  The door is latched. Sher’s mom whips back around to glare at me through the screen.

  “You try coming in without being asked and I’ll make sure you don’t ever have kids.”

  “Your daughter’s already working on it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She narrows her eyes again. I don’t answer and she swings back to Sher. “What’s he mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” Sher groans, but she’s too flinchy to be convincing. And from the looks of her, Sher’s mom is definitely a woman who has seen enough that she can’t be fooled anymore.

  “No, no, it sounds like it means something. Tell me what he means, Sher.”

  “He means I won’t marry him.” Sher shrugs, but her mother takes a step closer to her daughter, head tipped back slightly. Her nostrils flare, sniffing out the lie.

  “Why does this man want to marry you?”

  “Thanks Mom. I mean, seriously, thanks a lot.”

  But Sher’s mom stays nose to nose with her daughter. “Are you going to tell me, or is he? Because one of you is gonna tell me what I think I already know.”

  I wish the door was unlatched as Sher draws in a deep breath. I’m going to have to barrel right through the aluminum frame, if her mom reacts the way I think she will.

  “I’m pregnant,” Sher whispers, dropping her head. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Sher’s mom takes a step back and instead of fury, a streak of despair skids across her face. She doesn’t swing on Sher. Sher’s mother drags her daughter into her arms, squeezing her daughter’s shoulders in a desperate embrace. Then she turns to me as unlatches the door.

  “Come on in then, and help her pack her things,” she says. “I’m Lisa, by the way, and my daughter is your responsibility now.”

  ***

  Sher sinks her head and just walks away, through the living room and down the hall, to one of the rooms. Lisa lights a cigarette. The whole place smells like stale smoke. Four little kids, none of them quite dressed, are bouncing around on the ratty furniture. I try to avoid stepping on the ones that land on the floor, before they can scramble back onto their living room trampolines.

  “Who’re you?” One of the little boys asks before I can make it to the hall. He’s only wearing his underwear.

  “I’m a friend of Sher’s.”

  “More than just a friend, I’d say,” Lisa grunts, flicking ashes carefully into the hole of a cola can.

  “What’re you doing here? Are you going to live here now?” Another boy asks. This one is worse off than the first. He’s only wearing a long shirt and socks.

  “No, I’m not going to live here.”

  “You could, if you wanted,” the little boy says. “You could sleep in our room.”

  “No thanks. I’ve already got my own place.”

  The underpants kid carefully rolls a wad of his drawers between his fingers. “We could live with you, I guess.”

  “Sorry, guys. I don’t have a lot of room.”

  “We can sleep on the floor,” the little girl offers. The third and last little boy doesn’t seem interested in talking to me at all. Only bouncing on the last couch cushion until he comes down so hard that it crunches.

  “I told you to quit that, Beck.” Lisa points at the floor as she shouts at him, but Beck doesn’t stop bouncing and Lisa just throws up her hand in surrender. I continue down the hall.

  Sher’s in the first door on the right. I walk in and all I see is her hourglass curves from the back, hovering over the gym bag on her bed. The room has only one twin bed shoved against the wall, beneath a window covered with slatted aluminum blinds. The blinds are all bent up and let in a little sun that makes the wisps of Sher’s ponytail glow.

  A dresser, pressed against the dirty, pink wall, seems to be split right down the center. Half the dresser top is packed with make-up and bottles of hair stuff, a plastic jewelry box and a basket with some of the face and hair tools that girls always use to torture themselves. The other half is piled high with a collection of plastic ponies, some sporting braided tails and manes, some shaved clear off. Some of their faces are scribbled with markers so they look like four-legged Army Seals. The twin bed, with a grimy, cartoon princess face on one pillow and a clean blue-and-white polka dot design on the other, has obviously been sleeping two.

  “You need help?” I ask quietly from the doorway, but Sher still jumps at the sound of my voice. It’s funny, because when something slams against the living room wall adjacent to the bedroom, Sher doesn’t even flinch.

  “I don’t need help. You can just go.”

  “Where are you headed then?”

  “To the clinic, first,” she says. “And then…I don’t know. Somewhere.”

  “It doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”

  Sher drops some make up and a hair brush into her bag. “How many times do I have to say it, Landon? Just leave. This is not your problem.”

  “That’s not what your mom says, and I gotta tell you, I’m kind of afraid of your mom.” I chuckle and Sher drops her arms to her sides, throwing her head back with a tiny laugh that quickly turns to silent sobs that shake her back. I cross the room and wrap my arms around her, pressing her back to my chest. She goes rigid and then pulls my arms off her waist, even though she’s sniffling. With her back still to me, she sorts through the small pile of clothes on the bed, folding and dropping pieces into her bag.

  “You can stop trying to be my hero,” she says. “I don’t need one.”

  “But I do,” I tell her, “and this was the address they gave me.”

  She glances at me with a sarcastic puff of a laugh. She finishes with her belongings and zips up the bag. She turns toward me, her eyes on the door as she swings the strap of the bag onto her shoulder.

  “Then you are shit outta luck, buddy.”

  I block the door. I don’t like that she’s been living in this slummy apartment complex with her own scary mother. There’s no way I’m having her out on the street.

  “Look, your mom gave you to me,” I try to joke. “It doesn’t sound like there’s any trade-backs on the deal, so it looks like you’re coming with me.”

  “No, I’m not,” she growls and when she tries to push by me, I grab her bag and swing her up over my shoulder. “Oh my God, let me down! Right now, Landon! Let me down you sonofabitch!”

  She beats my back with both fists as I carry her out of the bedroom. Lisa stands back when she sees me coming, a little bit of shock forming around the lips that clasp her cigarette.

  “Don’t let him take me, Mom! Don’t do this!” Sher howls.

  “Shouldn’t have let him knock you up,” Lisa counters. “There’s nothing I can do about it now, Sher. I told you how it is and what would happen. I can’t have any more babies in this apartment, you knew that.”

  “MOM!” Sher shrieks. Lisa catches my arm.

  “Tell me your name, before you take my daughter out of here,” she says. The wrinkles around her eyes droop.


  “Landon Grace, ma’am.” I can’t hold out a hand to shake hers since I’m juggling Sher and her bag, but Lisa doesn’t look like she wants my handshake anyway. Instead, her eyes are narrowed again, like a circling buzzard.

  “Alright, Landon Grace. I got your license plate number and your name now.” She steps so close, I smell the ashes on her. “And if anything happens to my daughter, Landon Grace, just know that I will get you. By God, I will.”

  Honestly, I’ve never believed anyone more in my life than I believe Lisa Traifere are at this moment, with her Medusa hair, narrowed eyes, and her yellowed fingers, pronging the business end of her smoldering cancer stick in direct line with my left nipple. This is a woman who has born five wild children and looks like she’d relish the opportunity to remove my nuts with a rusty monkey wrench.

  “I believe you two hundred percent,” I tell her. She steps back then, and holds the door open for me, as I carry her furious daughter away.

  ***

  Of course, the second we’re out of the apartment, Bull-Ring meets us on the stairs going down to the parking lot. He’s retrieved his gun and has decided to give me another try.

  “Stop,” Bull-Ring says, pointing his gun at my eye. That gets my attention as much as how Sher grabs my waist and tries to pull her head, upside down, under my arm, so she can see Bull-Ring.

  “Trent? God dang it! Get out of here!”

  There’s not much I can do with Sher hollering from under my armpit, and a plastic pellet to the eyeball is going to cause way more problems than what I already have. But, even though he gets my attention, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to just give him what he wants. I keep on walking down the stairs toward him and Bull-Ring Trent retreats, stumbling backward.

  “I said stop.” The gun shakes in his hand as he totters off the ground floor step. It takes him a moment to regain his balance, which isn’t good, since this dope might accidentally fire off a pellet that could do more harm than if he were actually aiming. I step down onto the cement of the parking lot and I humor him.