Page 16 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

People love me. I am lovable.Positive self-talk. Affirmations of my worth. My therapist taught me to do it every time I feel undeserving of care or affection, which is more often than I care to admit. Empathy for myself is in short supply.

Aloud this time:

“People love me. I am lovable.”

CHAPTER

6

August 11th

12:57PM

THEANNESVILLE CHURCHis quiet. Always is on Mondays. I am alone except for a pair of landscapers trimming the hedges.

The church makes me think of my mother. She is a splinter lodged in the grooves of my brain. I drive up to the dingy portable classrooms situated at the edge of the grounds and try to imagine her trudging home after Bible study. Church was the only place my mother was allowed to go alone. Unless there was a blizzard, she walked there. She liked to take the long way, even in heels. If you walk half a mile onto the prairie beyond our house, you’ll find a neglected service road for a long-defunct water tower. Follow it far enough and the road bends to the east, where it eventually runs parallel to the church. As the service road reaches its terminus, you’ll pass three white crosses fixed atop a manmade hill: Gestas, Dismas, Jesus.

As I approach the portables, I see my mother’s poster taped to the doors, surrounded by colorful notes readingCOMEHOME ELISSA!andWE MISS YOU MRS. BYRD!My first reaction is gratitude, to be floored by the outpouring of well wishes for my mother’s safety, just as it had been when I saw yesterday’s search party turnout. Now Daniel’s words poison the feeling.

I still have a child’s quixotic notion of what it means to run away. I cling to the fantasies that inspired me to run away time and time again as a teenager. Once I escaped Annesville, I could cast off my chains and begin my life anew. I kept a list of places I would decamp to, the usual suspects like Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York. At one point, I had diligently mapped out the trains I would need to reach my destination. I would pack clothes, books, and food into a duffel bag before sliding out the window and fleeing down the street, a phantom into the night. I never made it further than Tyre before a deputy or a well-meaning neighbor returned me to my parents, never pausing to question why I was so clearly undernourished or why I flinched whenever they touched me.

I entertain a fantasy of my mother doing what I once did, only she makes it beyond Tyre. She sails out of Tillman County, on to Scottsbluff, further west to Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Reno, then finally reaching the promised land of California. Or perhaps she heads east in pursuit of anonymity in New York City, the way troubled women do in the movies. Maybe she even sneaks into Canada somehow, despite not having a passport. When she wasn’t neck deep in the bottle, my mother could bullshit with the best of them. It brings a smile to my lips to imagine her in a new city with a new name. The only hope my mother ever had at happiness was a clean break.

Just as easily, my mind gravitates toward darker alternatives, the countless grisly fates that can befall a missing woman. I find no thrill in imagining my mother suffering such an end, but the irony of this is not lost on me.

I am admiring the artwork in my mother’s honor when the door to the other portable classroom groans. Karishma chokes the drawstrings of a bulging trash bag, redness creeping up her neck to her cheeks when she recognizes me. “This is my punishment,” she says hurriedly. “Dad told the church ladies to put me to work, so I’m cleaning up the portables.”

How different my life would be if my father’s version of punishment had been taking out the trash at church instead of a palm to the face or denying me food for days on end. I wish I could say it relieved me to know at least one father in Annesville is decent, but it only stokes the jealousy living low in my belly. “They have janitors come every week,” I say, but the pause has already dragged on too long. Karishma meets my smile with one of her own, taut with nervousness. I peek over my shoulder to see if anyone is watching, maybe monitoring Karishma to make sure she isn’t slacking off, but it’s still only us and the landscapers, who are eating lunch on the bench overlooking the graveyard. When I smile at her again, I realize. She doesn’t want to be alone with me.

“I’m not a homicidal maniac.” The remark only intensifies Karishma’s horror, as if the mere reference to violence confirms my thirst for it. “Just like you and Grace aren’t car thieves. It’s a thing that happened. It’s not who you are.”

“It was joyriding, not grand theft auto.”

“You see the point I’m trying to make.”

Karishma sets the trash bag down. A clump of tissues rolls out. We both see it but don’t move to pick it up. “It’s, like … I like your mom. She’s so nice. She didn’t deserve what you did to her.”

She waits for me to agree, but I won’t give her the satisfaction. Who does she think she is? Who made her the arbiter of right and wrong? She didn’t live in my house. She didn’t see the things I saw. She didn’t live the horrors I lived. Yet here she is, in her infinite teenage wisdom, to chastise me.

“She used to give me rides home from school with Grace,” she continues, oblivious to my agitation. “She would bring pie.”

“Chokecherry pie.” The flaky crust glistening with butter, the tart bite of the chokecherries. My mother would pick me up before Harmony and allow me to sneak a slice without my sister’s knowledge.Our little secret, she would assure me with a wink. As I bask in the warmth of the memory, one of precious few pleasant moments I cherish from childhood, a twinge of sadness surfaces behind my ribs. If my mother was baking pies and picking me up from school, she was sober. It was as rare as it was blissful, more infrequent as the years wore on. Eventually she would stop bringing pies and stop picking me up from school, instead withdrawing to the darkened bedroom with her bottles.

The wind blows across the prairie and stirs up dust. It draws my attention to the shelf clouds looming at the edge of the sky. It’s August, for Christ’s sake. Tornado season should be over by now. “When’s the last time my mother drove you home?”

Karishma furrows her overplucked eyebrows. “You and Harmony both do that.”

“Do what? What are you talking about?”

“Saymotherinstead ofmom. It’s weird.”

“When’s the last time, Karishma?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe a few weeks ago.”

So she’s been sober recently. She was sober, maybe even clean, and compelled to give my phone number to Grace at around the same time. The new information frustrates me. I am trying to put a puzzle together with all the corner pieces missing. My mother is a stranger to me. Karishma knows her better than I do.

Karishma hooks the trash bag on the crook of her arm. “I need to finish up before this storm comes in.”

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