Mama

I was in the bathtub shaving my legs when I got the call that Mama had died. With one leg perched on the edge of my pink bathtub, I listened to Officer Henderson tell me how they found my mother unconscious in her bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. 

While he spoke, I focused on the droplets of water methodically releasing themselves from the faucet. Drip, drip. Breathe in, breathe out. Until the water sprouted legs, thin and black, gripping the mouth of the spout until they couldn’t hold on any longer. With a dramatic plop, a shiny black beetle the size of a small mouse plunged into the water. As it flailed, my stomach churned.

“You see, uh, the next-door neighbor, a lady named Alice, got worried when she saw the mail spilling out of your mom’s mailbox.” Officer Henderson prattled on,clearing his throat every third word which made my jaw clench.

“How long had she been there?” I asked.

“What?”

“How long had she been dead before you found her?”

“Oh, well,” another bloodboiling hack, “we think it was probably a week or so. Maybe more,” He chokes out. “Based on the uh, state of decomposition.”

At that, I promptly hung up the phone and vomited into the bath water.

—

Now I’m sitting in my car in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Arizona, not far from the Mexican border, staring at the tiny brick rancher I grew up in. It was all Mama had to her name. And now it’s mine. Funny how that works. You run away from something so fast you lose track of where you’ve been and end up right where you started.

It’s not like I had something great going on in Texas, but it was my life. Every problem I had was of my own doing — and I liked it that way. But I had to break my lease to afford the gas for the 14-hour drive, so now that life is in the rearview mirror and I’m facing a lifetime of fuck-ups. Someone else’s fuck-ups.

My body aches from hours hunched over a steering wheel, and I wonder for a moment if the raging fire in my hips isn’t a warning. Either way, I need something to ease to pain, and the only place within ten miles that sells hard liquor is The Snake Pit. A fact I’d forgotten when I passed a liquor store 45 minutes earlier.

While I never thought I’d ever return to the strip club where I spent every evening doing my homework, Mama coming to check on me in between customers, I never thought I’d be back at this house either.

__

By the time I make it to the warehouse-turned-club, the sky is on fire behind the big letter board sign that reads “HAPY HOR 6-8 BOGO BEER.” A red sun sits beneath a thin layer of dust, making the run-down stretch of highway feel more apocalyptic than ever before. 

Inside, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but eventually, I can make out two girls contorting around poles on either end of an hourglass-shaped platform. The lacquer-black floor of the stage reflects mutilated faces — three lonely men, each spaced as far apart from each other as possible. 

Walking into this place feels familiar, but my body feels all wrong. My view is different from up here, and I remember I’m a 30-year-old woman with 30-year-old woman features. The whole room turns to look at me, the men smirking and adjusting in their plush chairs. The faces of the two dancers change to reflect something only the presence of another female can conjure — safety. 

“WELCOME TO THE SNAKE PIT. BE RIGHT WICH YA,” comes a booming voice, then an unmistakable figure from the other side of the L-shaped bar.

“What can I…,” Alice starts. 

“Hey there, Alice,” I say, taking a stool and eyeing the rag she’s clutched to her chest.

“My heavens. Faye, I…I wondered if I might see you one of these days,” Alice says in a near whisper. “Honey, I’m so sorry about your mama.” 

She puts the rag down to place both her hands on top of mine, our little pile of fingers a hill atop the scratched-up wood bar. Sometimes when I was a kid I’d crack open the old VIP room door where Mama made me stay during the busy hours and I’d watch her strut from stool to stool, twirling and bouncing and making her slim body shake in unnatural ways. She looked like a broken doll that no one wanted to play with anymore. 

“Thanks, Alice. I just got here and…I haven’t been in the house yet. I was just hoping to get a drink.”

“Of course, honey. What would ya like?” Alice asks.

“I’ll take a beer, whatever’s on special. Give me both at once if you can.”

“Sure, honey.”

Alice turns to crack open two Miller Lites when the front door swings open and a new patron enters, letting in the last bits of sky fire behind him. 

“Ed.” Alice sets my beers down, acknowledging the man with a curt nod. 

He takes his place a few stools down, but instead of turning to face the now-topless women in the center of the room, he stares directly at the space between us. 

I learned at a young age what I had to do to avoid a man’s attention.

“You never make eye contact, baby. You got that?” My mother would give me the same pep talk every time we were about to enter The Snake Pit. “Just keep your head down and don’t ever take this off, okay?” 

She always dressed me in a big old Phoenix Suns sweatshirt that covered my whole body down to the middle of my calves. It was black and scratchy inside from the cheap, pilled fabric. I always wondered if it was my father’s, but I never asked. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

But I wasn’t wearing a big sweatshirt now, and it was hot out, so my jean shorts and white tank top, sheer from sweat, were unforgiving.

“I don’t work here, sorry,” I said to the man, loudly.

Once I became a teenager and oversized clothing proved ineffective, I learned to resort to aggression. I find most men don’t want the hassle. Unfortunately, some do.

“Shame,” says the man in a gravelly smoker’s voice.

I can’t help my instinct to look at him. His tall, lanky body is draped over the bar, his face shadowed by a cowboy hat. His hands are dark and wrinkled from years in the sun. In the dimly lit room, he’s more shadow than man.

“You look just like your mama,” he growls, quieter this time.

Something violent bursts in my chest — fire moving through my jaw. I fly out of my chair moving to one of the stage seats across the room. I shouldn’t have come here, I think to myself. 

See, Mama never followed her own advice. While I was hiding in my sweatshirt and saying “no, thank you” to every man in the club that offered me a soda, Mama drew them in. She’d put on a big smile and twirl the hair on her blonde wig around her long, skinny fingers. They loved that stuff, all of them. They loved it so much they’d come home with us sometimes. Mama would make me sit in the trunk, all curled up in my sweatshirt, and I’d have to stay there even when we got home. At some point she’d come out and get me because I always woke up in my bed. 

So it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a man here who probably knows her better than I ever did. 

“How are you tonight, beautiful?” A freckle-faced girl with auburn hair down to her waist drops to her knees in front of me. Her eyes sparkle with hope. “I’m Angel. You want a dance?” 

“No, thank you. Just watching,” I respond. I pull out two crumpled dollar bills and place them on the stage. 

Across the room I see the shadow man move slowly toward the stage, waving a fan of dollar bills at Angel. She obliges, pushing her breasts up under his nose, then slinking across the stage floor, her rear in the air like a dog. 

Abruptly, Ed grabs Angel’s arm and pushes her fingers into his mouth. He makes an indistinguishable noise that sounds something like a goat. Angel flinches, but keeps her body perfectly still. 

I stand up and look around for anyone who can help, but when I finally make eye contact with Alice, she just looks from me to Angel and back again, before busying herself on the other side of the bar. 

“Hey! I’ll take that dance now,” I yell toward Angel. She and the shadow man stop and stare at me for a moment before she scurries across the room. 

“Hurry,” she whispers, and waves me through a beaded curtain behind the stage. 

“Hey, wait,” I say, trying to keep up. “How much? I’ve only got fifteen on me.”

“That’s fine!” Angel calls over her shoulder, then ushers me into a tiny room with padded walls and a brown loveseat coated in plastic. Angel sets down her small sequin bag, then begins adjusting her lingerie.

“Oh, you don’t need to dance,” I say, trying to find any place to sit that’s not the couch. I settle for a corner of the concrete floor. “I just didn’t want to watch that creep.”

“Oh, okay,” Angel smiles and sits down in front of me, her legs criss-crossed like a kid. “Well, we can talk if you like?”

“Sure…um, hey, is there someone who can help you when customers act like that?” I ask. 

“You must be new here.” Angel shifts on the hard floor, lowering her voice. “That’s Ed. He…he just does what he wants, and we have to let him do it. So don’t raise a fuss.”

“Why? What happens if you say ‘no’?” I ask, my brows furrowed.

“I just know that the last girl who tried to put him in his place was taken outside by Pat — that’s the manager here — and she never came back,” Angel whispers quickly and intensely. “Then, three months later, they found her body in the trunk of an abandoned car. She’d probably been there all that time.”

“But…” I shake my head, trying to make sense of it.

“I have a daughter,” Angel interrupts and locks eyes with me. Her hands rest gently on my folded knees. “I need this job.”

“Come home with me,” I say, standing up, a little buzzed.

“What?” She laughs, looking up at me from the dirty floor.

“Just…you can’t be here. Not when that guy is out there.” 

I don’t know what I’m doing, but the feeling inside me is urgent. The burning has moved from my jaw to my brain, making my head feel like static. 

“I have cash at home, so I can give you whatever you’d make tonight,” I say, hoping Mama still kept a wad of cash in her underwear drawer. She didn’t trust banks.

“I don’t know…” Angel folds her arms, covering her small breasts.

“Look, my mom used to work here. I know there’s a back door at the end of this hall, and we can just leave. You can drive my car if it makes you feel better.”

Angel shifts her weight back and forth, considering the offer.

“How long do I have to stay?” Angel asks.

“Oh, well, as long as you like.”

__

Outside Mama’s house, I take a couple of deep breaths, then unlock the door and hold it open for Angel. I turn on the lights, nervously, unsure of what state the house was left in. Together, Angel and I survey the space, each of us looking for something we hope isn’t there. It’s a small house, so it doesn’t take long.

“Well,” I say, satisfied at the lack of dead bodies and other decaying matter. “Let me get you that cash. How much?”

“$250 would be fine,” Angel says. She sits on the fuzzy pink sofa in the living room, the same one I convinced Mama to buy when I was five because I told her it looked like something Barbie would sit on. “My real name’s Chrissy by the way.”

“My name’s Faye.”

Mama’s bedroom is eerily organized, the bed sheets crisp and tucked in at the corners. When I open the top drawer of her dresser, there’s a wad of cash bound by a rubber band. It sits underneath a thin layer of stained cotton underwear, right where I remember it. But there’s something else too. A small envelope with “Faye” written on the front.

Inside, on a torn sheet of notebook paper, is my Mama’s handwriting. 

My darling Faye,

If you’re reading this, then I must be dead. I don’t know how long it will take you to get here, but I know you’ll come eventually. And when you do, I need you to know that it’s not safe here. The police won’t bother digging too deep for a woman like me, so don’t trust what they tell you. You take whatever you want from the house and get rid of the rest. Hell, burn it if you want. But then you leave and you don’t come back. 

Beware the nightcrawler.

I love you, Faye. I tried to make you proud.

Your Mama

With trembling fingers, I put the paper back in its envelope and then in the pocket of my shorts. Questions come and go like sparklers through my mind. 

When I walk back into the living room, Chrissy is standing by the fireplace, holding the only framed photo I’ve seen in the house so far. 

“Is this your mom?” Chrissy asks, turning the frame so I can see the photo of Mama and me. I must have been about three or four years old, my chubby cheeks covered in vanilla ice cream. Mama is looking down on me, and she looks beautiful.

“Yeah,” I say, tears prickling my eyelids.

“I know her,” Chrissy says, setting down the frame. “She comes into the club a lot. She brings food and clothes for the girls who are really struggling. I think she lets some stay with her too. I haven’t seen her in a while, though.”

“She’s dead,” I choke out. 

“Oh,” Chrissy’s mouth freezes in a small “O.” “I’m sorry. She was a really nice lady.”

The room is spinning, so I close my eyes and try to untangle the web of new information.

“Hey, do you know what the ‘night crawler’ is?”

Angel snorts and plops back down on the sofa.

“Yeah, that’s our nickname for Ed.” She shakes her head. “Everyone who works at the club uses it as a sort of code so we know when he’s around. And what we gotta do.”

The sparklers fizzle out. The fire turns to ice. And I realize I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.