The Tender Grave

I.

Dori was still a little high. Her blood vessels pulsed all through her scalp, like she was a cartoon character and someone was sketching her a wig that very minute, bearing down with a marker and drawing every strand of fake hair on her oversized fake head. She felt cartoonish, and her timid cartoon-blood crept fretful through her blood vessels. Why was her blood so bashful, and why did it move so slowly? She pictured her blood cells like little hunchbacks all in a line, a chain gang of hunchback blood cells in a comic book of their own, staggering along one frame at a time, going nowhere. She scratched at her scalp and was surprised to find that her hair was still wet from the shower. She didn’t feel quite real.

As the lights of the bus station came into view, bright in that hour before morning, yet somehow still dingy-looking, her mom veered to the side of the road and pumped at the old Buick’s brakes. The brakes didn’t half work anymore; the tires were worse, already bald, and it had started to drizzle, so the tires had more than the usual trouble catching.

It made her sick, how they jerked, and then jerked, and then slid to a stop, still a full block from the depot in that rural, run-down North Carolina town.

Her mom clicked on the car’s interior light and dug through her pocketbook, finding at last the envelope with rent scribbled in tiny tight letters right where the stamp should go. Dori watched her count out what money she had— not enough for rent, anyway— turning all the crumpled bills in the same direction and straightening them out before handing them to Dori. She’d use that envelope again.

Alright, darling, her mom said. Time to go.

Dori unclipped her seatbelt and tucked the money into the pocket of her jeans, but as she reached to open the door, her mom said, Hang on. From the glove compartment, beneath the owner’s manual, her mom produced a second envelope, this one her tire fund. She licked her finger and counted through another small stack of tens and fives.

What will you do? Dori asked.

Her mom slammed shut the glove box, shook her head and shrugged. She pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag. I’ll make do, she said, holding in the smoke a long time before she exhaled. I’ve got no choice.

The thick smoke lingered between them. Dori tried to hold her breath. The chain gang of blood cells stomped their little boots inside her newly drawn head. I’m sorry, Mom, she replied. Try not to drive on the highway, okay? A deacon at their church who was also a mechanic had told them they shouldn’t go over thirty on those tires.

Just get out, said her mom, but Dori couldn’t. Not yet.

Her mom sighed, took off her glasses, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Dori could see fingerprints smudging the lenses of her glasses, and so she lifted them from her mom’s thigh and cleaned them on her T-shirt before giving them back.

Thank you, sugar, said her mom. She took Dori’s hand and squeezed it, then kissed her first knuckle and her second, and said a prayer that God would watch over her and keep her safe. Now, please, just go.

The sun wasn’t yet up, but the milkiness of the coming day pushed through the dark. Dori didn’t look back. She was still a little drunk and took care not to stumble as she crossed the potholed parking lot, reciting to herself, Don’t step on the crack or you’ll break your momma’s back. She tried not to cry when she heard those threadbare tires squeal off.

• • • •

Most of the seats on the bus were already taken. Dori pushed her way along the narrow corridor, her overstuffed backpack grazing the shoulders of passengers along the aisle. She tripped over a sneaker nudged into the walkway but caught herself before she fell. Halfway back, she found a spot next to a skinny brown-skinned granny and dropped into it as the bus began to roll. She had the worst headache of her life, so she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the heavy thumps escaping a stranger’s earphones.

She hadn’t been to bed, not all night, and though she’d brushed her teeth before she left, her mouth already tasted stale. She suspected it might taste that way forever, whether she brushed or gargled again or not: her new reality, her life the flavor of bile.

She hugged her backpack and tried to rest, but in her dreams she was a never-ending bass note, a note trying to slip around the edges of the bud in somebody’s ear and disappear.

She wished that she were dead, and that her boyfriend Cane were dead, and that the world as she knew it had scorched to ashes. She wished she’d never been born.

In her mind, she went round and round, like her mom’s old patched tires with no treads left, no way to get a grip on anything. It made her hate her mom— that she drove around on old bald tires. Then it made her cry— that she might never see her mom again. Round and round, a circle of hating and sorrow.

At a later stop, when her seatmate got off, she threw herself against the window, pushed her pack into the neighboring space, and tried to sleep in spite of a crying baby and the dings and sizzles of a video game on somebody’s phone, no headphones. But images from the night before kept intruding: the spray of blood across her favorite coral cami, the blood splats on her canvas flats, her mom still in her nightgown shoving Dori fully clothed into the shower and scrubbing her down, saying, Oh, my Lord. My dear Lord Jesus, then stripping her and rubbing soap into the stains on her clothes, bits of grass and clumps of dissolving dirt swirling around the palest pink water at their feet. The images interwove with the screeches of the bus’s brakes, the one-sided phone call of somebody desperate to make it to New York before his brother died, the driver’s announcements of this station or that one, the rustle of passengers coming and going.

Dori woke with a glaze of diesel exhaust clinging to her skin, an oily coating across her nose and forehead. Someone had stolen her backpack by then. At least she’d had the good sense to keep her wallet in her pocket— a back pocket that buttoned— and her mom’s cash buried deep in front. She still had money, but no spare clothes and no phone. She knew better than to use the phone, of course, but it had all her pictures on it. So she’d turned it off, wrapped it in a T-shirt, and stashed it at the bottom of her pack. Now her pictures were gone, too. She had no food or water and no toothpaste or deodorant, which she needed. A ripe fear pooled in the pits of her arms. She couldn’t escape her own stink.

The bus driver was no help. The passengers around her had seen nothing. She wasn’t sure where she’d been when she’d closed her eyes or how many bus stops they’d passed. The driver suggested she file a police report in Richmond, but she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t talk to the police when she was probably wanted by the police, or would be soon.

At the terminal in Richmond, she got off anyway with plans to board a different bus— one headed for the Virginia coast and toward the older half sister she’d never met. Maybe her sister would welcome her, if she was lucky. She bought a bagel from a vending machine, but even with the cream cheese, it was too tough to eat. It reminded her of taking communion, and how sometimes the host would just swell inside your mouth, huge and unchewable, and wasn’t that fitting— to be so full of the body of Christ that you couldn’t even swallow?

When the next bus came, she threw away the bagel and boarded. She told herself not to be afraid. Plenty of times she’d pictured running away, taking her backpack and heading cross-country. This wasn’t so different— just another kind of adventure— and for a while, she was glad to be anonymous and traveling light. But fear kept surging up, sour in her mouth and in her guts.

She tried to pray, but why would God listen? She was a troublemaker. She knew about the wages of sin.

It wasn’t long before her imagination highjacked that bus and drove it directly toward Hell, that charred and fiery chasm she’d heard so much about. She tried to focus on the pine trees, green and supple, passing by the dirty bus window, but Hell kept coming back, how her skin would crisp and blacken and flake away. She could hear her dad’s voice, preaching and crying and beseeching God to save them all from eternal damnation. But Dori knew her soul was unredeemable. She would writhe in the flames for all eternity. She’d earned it.

All along that eastbound route, she kept peeking up and catching glimpses of the bus driver’s eyes in the oversized rear-view mirror. He stared her down, relentless. He could be the grim reaper himself.

It was almost like Hell, the next bus station in Norfolk, where she spent half the night hiding in the grimy women’s bathroom and the other half huddled on a painted metal bench. But the next morning, the bus that carried her across the Chesapeake Bay and onto Virginia’s eastern shore was spacious and quiet, and the transit van she took for the final leg of her journey was nearly empty. She had two seats to herself to stretch her legs across. The driver, a cheerful snaggletoothed woman who played gospel music and sang along, wished Dori a blessed day as she dropped her off at the edge of a bayside fishing village, the town where her older half sister supposedly lived.

• • • •

Dori walked the rest of the way, peeking back over her shoulder even as she passed through the tiny business district, beyond the rows of houses, and down to the water. There was a breeze coming off the water, and she decided to rest there a while, calm herself there. She’d made it. She settled on a rock jetty that separated the public beach from what was left of a fallen-in dock.

The dock itself had washed away, and all that remained were the pilings: weather-worn, leaning, jutting up from the sandy bay floor and marking off the tide. Some of the pilings were twenty feet tall; others had worn to nubs. They looked like the ribs of some decomposing sea beast. Terns and pelicans kept vigil from the irregular tops of posts.

The place was eerie and peaceful at once, but it wasn’t entirely private. For company, Dori had a chatty little boy playing in the algae along the shoreline.

It’s just like salad, said the boy. Salad for stingrays and sharks. He picked up a leaf of the slimy-looking sea lettuce, shook away clumps of sand and brine, and stuffed it into his mouth.

Yuck, said Dori. She’d never been to that beach before, had never seen that kid before, had never tasted seaweed in her life and didn’t want to.

But she was hungry. Except for some cheese puffs she hadn’t eaten since the too-tough bagel the day before.

The boy spit and giggled. It’s gritty, but it don’t taste that bad. Be better with ketchup, though. You want some?

No thanks, she said. She wished he’d scat. That’s what her mom used to say when she wanted alone time and Dori was being a pest: Scat! But this kid was going nowhere.

The air was thick and muggy, and the gray sky faded into water the color of knives. In the distance, church bells rang three times and played a hymn she recognized, though she couldn’t remember the words.

The boy said, You’re not supposed to be down here. This is the working beach. The tourist beach is down yonder. He pointed south, where a few beach chairs and umbrellas randomly freckled the sand. "This ain’t where you go to get a suntan. I’ll tell you that."

Dori shrugged. What are you doing here then?

I ain’t no tourist, said the kid. I’m waiting for my daddy! He motioned to a man in waders walking out among gray pilings, a five-gallon bucket in one hand, a crab line in the other.

Dori wished she was on vacation. I’m not a tourist either, she replied.

That seemed to satisfy the boy. He was maybe seven, wormy-looking and brown from the sun. He wore only a pair of cut-off shorts and scratched at bug bites all over his arms and back and belly, his legs, and even his head. Red welts peeked from beneath his crew cut, some of them scabby.

The boy found a stick and dragged it along the shoreline, holding it up to impress her with the seaweed and lettuce he’d harvested.

That’s nasty, Dori called back.

Is not, he said. I’ll show you how to make tater chips. He rinsed some of the lettuce in the clearer water just beyond the gunk that had settled over the rocky place where bay met sand. Then he climbed up onto the jetty next to her. Once you clean it, you just tear it into pieces and stretch it out on the rocks like this. Carefully, he draped each bright green leaf on the sunny granite. You wait for it to dry out good and crunchy, he explained. Then you got tater chips.

From out in the water, the boy’s father hollered, Hey, Randy, quit bothering that gal and bring me the net.

I ain’t bothering nobody, the kid yelled back, but he scrabbled down the rocks and waded out. While he was gone, Dori climbed down, too, and paced that empty strip of beach, finding oyster shells and pieces of broken bottles littering the edges, bits of rock and dried-out legs of dead crabs in the sunshine. The pilings were shorter closer to shore. You could peek right down into the hollowed-out centers of some of them and find cracked shells or stuffed-down candy bar wrappers.

Dori rolled up her jeans and splashed her way just far enough to stand among those pilings with their seagulls perched atop. It was such a quiet place: softly lapping water, occasional squawks of laughing gulls, a good place to clear her head and work up her nerve before she went searching for the older half sister she’d never met.

She would need to look cute, even though she couldn’t possibly be cute, given all she’d been through the past couple of days. She’d need to be charming. She could still be charming— or at least she could try.

She examined the posts and found tiny black snails and hairy-looking grasses growing against the wet wood. She found barnacles and algae, and in the distance she saw the boy’s father thigh-deep and pulling in one crab after the next, surprising them as they feasted on what grew along those posts.

In a while the boy ran back to find her.

Hey, he called, What’s your name?

She wondered if she should make up a name, but in the end, she told the truth.

You wanna be my girlfriend? he asked.

I’m too old for you, she said and laughed. She was seventeen, but could pass for twenty. Besides, I got a boyfriend already. Just thinking of him made her choke.

The boy shrugged and said, That’s okay. I’ll show you my hideaway anyhow. He led her up the bank to a hot place where the high tide couldn’t reach, talking all the while. Dori was glad to be distracted. They stepped over rocks and broken bricks, then to hot sand pocked with holes from ghost crabs shying from the sun. Creeper vines and grasses masked a place where trees had tipped over, leaving wiggly roots partially exposed and partially embedded in the ground. Trees with scoliosis, their lowest branches grew against the sand.

The boy pushed back some vines to reveal a shady, shallow cave beneath one tree’s contorted branches. Come on in, he said.

He had a little braided rug in there and some plastic army men he kept inside a rusted cookie tin. He crouched on the rug, and Dori sat beside him, and he introduced her to his army. The vines and leaves against her neck kept making her think there were spiders on her. Again and again she slapped at nothing.

You come here every day? she asked.

Just Sundays, said the boy. My granny’s sick, so we bring groceries every Sunday. Then me and Daddy come down here and crab while Momma visits and rolls her hair.

Oh, she said.

Momma fixes chicken and puts it in Mason jars so Granny can eat it all week long. She don’t eat that much, though.

Dori’s belly grumbled.

Sounds like you could eat a whole jarful of chicken, said the boy. Does your granny live here, too?

No, said the girl.

She didn’t mention her older half sister. She hoped her sister hadn’t moved away. She had a name and an address, memorized long ago from an envelope with a postmark so faded you could hardly read it. As soon as she worked up her courage, she planned to scope things out.

I’ll show you where my granny lives, the boy offered. It ain’t far.

Dori couldn’t care less, but it was such a relief to have somebody to talk to, somebody safe. So she followed Randy out of the cave, and he led her down to the water, then around some rocks on the far side of the pilings, and back to sand again. From there, he pointed out a small bungalow that sat alone about a quarter-mile inland, huddled between squatty, fat trees at the far edge of the town. That’s my granny’s house, he said.

Does she live there by herself? Dori asked.

Yep, said the boy.

Maybe you should move her to the nursing home so she can hang out with other old people.

She’s too old and set in her ways, said the boy. She don’t even go to church no more. Only place she goes is therapy— to get her broke shoulder worked on. Every Tuesday morning at eleven. You ever been to therapy? he asked.

No, she said.

It feels good, he said. Some Tuesdays I sneak on the table next to my granny and let the therapist stretch all my muscles.

The boy’s father called to him again: Randy! Get over here!

You better go, said Dori. He sounds mad.

But Randy didn’t hurry. He just shrugged and made squiggles in the sand with his toes. If you be my girlfriend, he said, I’ll tell you a secret.

You’re a mess, said Dori. I already told you, I’ve got a boyfriend. You wouldn’t want me to two-time him, would you?

Well, yeah, said Randy. It’s a really good secret.

Okay, she said. Just tell me.

Randy grinned. Back before I was born, he said, when I was still in my momma’s belly, I had a pair of magic flip-flops. But they fell off when I was coming out.

Oh yeah? said Dori.

They’re probably still in my momma’s belly somewhere.

Dori laughed and said, You think?

If I had them flip-flops, I could jump from here to that pier way down yonder. He pointed to a place so far down the beach that you could barely make out the people fishing. Just leap right up and land way over there.

I need me some shoes like that, said Dori.

I can still remember them, Randy told her, from when I was a tiny baby, not even yet borned.

• • • •

Just before sundown Dori went exploring. She found the avenue where her older half sister supposedly lived and followed the sidewalk to the address— a wooden two-story house with overgrown oleanders around