Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [57]
“Turtle, Turtle, Turtle,” someone is saying. “It’s okay, Mama, I told you about.” All the cars are shiny animals under water. They can’t get air.
Somewhere else in the old place was that shine of angels or stars too close, the underwater, shoes on the floor and no light and a man’s voice across your mouth and you can’t get air. A woman crying.
A woman turned on a flashlight and moved her arms that were like fish arms, and her mouth opened and closed.
“We can eat at the coffee shop,” her mother’s voice is saying. The bubbles break open and Turtle hears each one of those words come out. So much time has passed that it might be another day, or the same day but dark. It isn’t dark. They are in the car, moving. The front seat is far away. A boy on a bicycle goes by, the gold bicycle lifting its front wheel off the sidewalk again and again like a scared horse. The boy has a yellow shirt and blond hair in his eyes, laughing, not afraid. His feet move faster than he is going. Turtle kneels on the seat and looks back, watching this one boy and bicycle that look the right way, until they are gone. She sits down again.
“The good news is you can get a hotel room in this town for eleven dollars a night. If you stay in a junky place with a casino downstairs. I guess they figure on getting your money by other means.”
“They done got yours,” Grandma says.
“A hundred and ten dollars. I could shoot myself.”
Turtle sees her hands, and thinks: These are my hands.
“That’s if you would have stopped when you got to the top. That’s not what you started out with.”
“No, we started with fifty.”
“So that’s all you lost, really.”
“Why didn’t I stop?”
“Because you were speculating. If you could get a hundred and ten out of fifty, why couldn’t you make a thousand out of a hundred and ten.”
“Stupid.”
“Stupid as every other soul in this town, honey. Look at those neon lights, and tell me who you think is paying the electric bill.”
“We were feeling lucky.”
“That’s who’s paying it. Mister and Missus I was feeling lucky.”
“We found the fifty dollars on the car windshield. Turtle found it.” She looks back in the driving mirror and smiles. Her face around her eyes is red and white. “It felt like maybe that money was charmed.” She laughs the way that means nothing is really funny: tssh, pushing out air, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe a person could put two hundred quarters in a slot machine one right after another and not win anything.”
Grandma laughs. “You’ve got a hair of your daddy in you. Foster was a gambler.”
Turtle says, “Mama, do you have a daddy?” But they don’t hear, the words only walked inside her ears. The back-teeth door is still closed. When her six-year molars came in, they felt like a pocketful of small rocks squeaking and rubbing.
“A better one than me, I hope.”
“Lord, no, he wasn’t worth a toot as a gambler. If there was a storm coming in he’d bet you it was going to stay dry, just to put spice in his day. One time he bet a man he could outrun his dog.”
“What kind of a dog was it?”
“I don’t know, but it left Foster at the starting post. If the dog had lapped up as much Old Grand-Dad as Foster had, Foster might of had a chance.”
Turtle opens her mouth wide and says, “Mama, do you have an old granddad?” In the front seat they both laugh out loud. True laughing, not pushed air. They have heads on their bodies, laughing mouths, and hands; they look the right way again. Turtle has hands also. She lies down and hugs herself.
“Look at us. Three crazy girls in the city of lonely hearts.” Taylor squeezes Alice’s hand on top of the table. The hotel is called the Delta Queen Casino, and the coffee shop is decorated in a conartist theme: on the wall are large framed photos of Clark Gable as Rhett in Gone With the Wind, and