Renee Evans:

Renee Evans is a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review and roger.

Traverse

(excerpted from the full-length piece that originally appeared in roger)

            The young woman pulls a tissue from her red purse and wipes her daughter’s nose. The child turns her head and the mother clutches at every piece of this scene she can: the lines between her daughter’s eyebrows, the tight corkscrew curls, the skin that always smells like syrup. The young woman wants to cry, but they are on the bus, and people aren’t supposed to cry on the bus, or in public places. People should save that sort of thing for inside their houses. But a  month ago her landlord left a note saying she’d been evicted—people always say she isn’t very bright, but she knows what it means to be evicted—and has no place to cry. Her daughter is too young to understand, and the woman hopes not knowing will make this easier. The young woman folds the used tissue around its warm contents and puts it back into her purse.

            For a while, she was proud of herself for doing so well. A place to stay and a job that let her bring the child to work. Her daughter played in a pen in the manager’s office while the young woman took orders and delivered food. Mr. Holly, the manager—he was a nice man with a round stomach and a round nose and a round, bald head—stayed in there with her as much as he could, but sometimes he had to see to unhappy customers. The daughter didn’t speak much, but she pointed to every fat old man she saw and called him “Lolly.” On her breaks, the young woman sneaked leftover dinner rolls to her daughter, who plucked at the bread with her still-chubby fingers and sogged it around in her mouth. It was a mess to clean up, but the child laughed and grinned and showed bits of sticky white bread between her perfect little teeth.

            Mr. Holly was pretty good at calming customers down. The young woman had grown accustomed to knocking on his door when someone rolled his eyes and said, “Can I see your manager?” And they used that tone of voice with her, too. She was polite and allowed the customer to be always right—besides, she could take a second to pick up the child and hug her before she went back to check on her tables.

The last time she knocked on Mr. Holly’s door, the customer followed her to the manager’s office and peeked inside. The child smiled when she looked up and saw the young woman standing just behind the customer, but he wasn’t happy to see the child.

“What is this?” The man raised his voice and pointed—it is not polite to point.

“I’m sorry, sir. Would you like to speak out in the dining room?” Mr. Holly stood between the child and the customer.

“What the hell is a kid doing here?”

The young woman picked up her crying daughter.

“No wonder the service here is terrible—running a daycare for retards.”

At that, Mr. Holly asked the man to leave. Before he left, the man threatened to have everyone fired. But everyone wasn’t fired—just Mr. Holly and the young woman. So she collected her final paycheck early one morning and left before Mr. Holly got there. She felt bad for getting him fired.

The bus’s brakes squeal and both the young woman and her daughter jump at the noise. Their stop is coming up soon. The child fusses and shuts her green eyes—she is tired or hungry or everything all at once. The young woman pulls a packet of crackers from her purse. They ate at a buffet yesterday and stayed in the booth a long time. They sat under a window and threw food at one another. The young woman watched her child’s movements, tried to memorize the creases and folds of fat. This baby will be a beautiful woman someday—the young woman felt good about that. She stuffed that red purse full of crackers before they left. They couldn’t afford to leave a tip.

            The child bounces along in her seat and gets crumbs down her front. She sits still long enough for the young woman to brush them away. She watches the specks fall to the floor of the bus and grows angry. She is angry at herself. And at the purse. No, this is her fault. She was selfish—she is selfish. She just wanted something for herself. It was just a purse. A pretty red purse with a metal clasp that clicks when it closes, just sitting there all shiny in the window. And she hasn’t received a birthday present in years. She hadn’t considered how much money she wouldn’t have for rent until it came time to pay the rent. People say she’s not too bright. She tried to take the purse back, but the woman said they didn’t do that.

            So as they sat at the buffet yesterday, the young woman thought about what she should do. She didn’t know. She doesn’t have Mr. Holly’s phone number or his address. And if she did, how could she pay him for anything he did for her? The last time she owed someone, the man said he could show her how to find an apartment—she was just out of the children’s home, old enough to be on her own, they said—the man found a room for her to stay, helped her make the child, then left. Everything else she’s done on her own, including mess it all up. But she planned for this. She was sure to save enough money for the trip.

            The bus doors open. This is their stop. The young woman gathers her daughter into her arms and steps off the bus and pauses. The afternoon sun is bright and glares off the parking lot. An old man with a bagful of groceries grumbles, pushes past the young woman and onto the bus. He smells like sweat and bus exhaust.

            The child buries her face in her mother’s neck. It feels good—the girl’s hair tickles and the bump of her nose fits perfectly into the woman’s neck. This will be harder than she thought.

            But she tried to think of all of this yesterday. She told herself that this was what had to be done. For the child. She has ruined enough, and even if it hurts, she has to do it. She hasn’t cried. But her insides feel foreign. She doesn’t feel sick—just wrong. For a second she wonders if she could just turn around and walk away. Or maybe a better solution will stop her before she passes through the sliding doors, but nothing happens. She adjusts the child on her hip and keeps moving.

            An older lady in a vest is arranging carts when the young woman and her daughter enter. The older lady doesn’t look up as the young woman heads for the back of the store. This was the one place the young woman knew her daughter would be safe. She holds tighter to the child as she passes shelves of stereos and televisions. “Lolly,” the child points to a picture of an old man who is on all of the screens. The sound is turned off, and he looks odd smiling and moving his mouth. She can’t understand what he is saying. She keeps walking.

            Color and color and color is what she sees. This is her favorite section of the store—the fabrics section. Sometimes the bolts are arranged by color, sometimes by pattern, other times, the workers put the ones that feel the same in one bin. The child claps her hands. She likes this section, too.

            The young woman thinks she should put the child down to let her wander between the shelves and feel them for herself, but the woman can’t bring herself to let the child out of her arms. They move together.

            “Look,” she says, and puts the child’s hand on a roll of bright orange fabric that looks fuzzy. It reminds her of blankets she has wrapped her daughter in. The child breathes through her mouth—shiny bottom lip. Her nose is running again. The young woman uses the loose flap of fabric to wipe her daughter’s face. The child leans into it. She smiles.

            They walk around all the stacks of fabric, mother and daughter holding one hand out to feel the different textures, holding on with the other hand. They pass quickly by the reds and head for the wall of fabrics behind the cutting counter. There are no workers back there at the moment. Three rows of different kinds of fabric. She can only reach the first two, but they make two passes—one to feel the bottom row, one to feel the middle. Some of the colors she doesn’t even know the names of. Standing there in front of all that color, she wants more than ever to cry. But this is just as public as the bus. She has no home to cry in.

            They stop at the counter with pattern catalogs. The young woman picks one out and sits on the floor with her daughter in her lap. Her child weighs barely anything. There is not enough of her. They flip open the magazine and peel one glossy page from the next. She can hear her daughter breathe through her mouth. The young woman knows her own child’s breath. She is concentrating on turning the pages one at a time. The child’s tiny back—with all the tiny bones inside—presses against the mother’s stomach.

            “Pick one,” the young woman says to her daughter. She smells the girl’s hair. She kisses her cheek—feels the way the skin pushes back; it tastes like syrup.

            They sit there on the floor, hidden between aisles, for a long time.

The young woman will not cry. Her daughter will not cry.

“Pick one and I’ll make it for you.”

The child is so young. She should not understand, but she turns the pages one at a time. The young woman picks up her daughter and sets the child down beside her. The magazine goes onto the girl’s lap. She bends her head and focuses on separating one page from the others with her little fingers.

The young woman kisses her baby girl on the head lightly—she does not want to distract the child from her task—hair and scalp and syrup; that’s all she can take in.

The young woman tucks her red purse under her arm and walks quickly out of this public place.