In our mother’s old Nova, Camille and I take a pretend trip to the Mexican border. We want to buy bead necklaces and orange wrap skirts — cheap. We don’t have much money, only what we managed to save from our allowance. Just across the border we can buy for half price.
We’ve been once, for real, when our mother and one of her boyfriends took us on a day trip. They bought statues: a wood-carved standing Jesus in prayer, and a brown mustang rearing on his hind legs. They bought the statues from the lines of vendors by the side of the freeway and wouldn’t let us get out of the car.
This time we’re going to mingle with the natives, Camille says. We’re going to haggle for the best price.
“They’re hungry for the American dollar,” Camille says. “We’ll talk them down to a good deal for us.”
Camille is sitting on the pillows from her bed so she can see over the steering wheel. She brought her black purse that was our mother’s until last year. Inside, she has her Maybelline Wine and Roses lipstick, an empty compact with a mirror she pulls out at traffic lights to check her pretend eye makeup, and a man’s white handkerchief she says belonged to our father. She has no proof. But she won’t use it. She keeps it pressed and folded and either in her purse or in the top drawer of her dresser, where no one, not even our mother, is allowed to go.
She also brought her favorite sweater, a green fuzzy pullover with a pearl button in the back. She brought her first bra; she has only one. And her radio.
I brought two apples from the fruit bowl on our way out of the house.
This trip is sudden. Camille found me in the backyard, in our mother’s lounge chair, where I sometimes read. I have my rabbit’s foot in my pocket because I don’t go anywhere without it, and a dollar for the ice-cream man.
I found Simon sitting in a sun spot by the car and put him on the seat between us. He’s walking on the back dash now. His claws get stuck in the stereo speakers and he has to shake them free. He makes sharp, yowling cries when this happens.
“Can’t you shut that cat up?” Camille asks. “I’m trying to drive.”
“His paws are stuck.”
“Then unstick them,” she says, and heaves a breath that messes her bangs.
By the time I reach into the backseat, Simon has taken care of it himself.
Camille drives smoothly, turning the wheel with her fingertips. She learned from watching our mother.
I’m sitting in the passenger seat. Reading the map is my responsibility, although Camille says it won’t take much brain to do it.
“It’s a straight shot all the way. You just look out for police,” she says.
We don’t want to spend all our money on a speeding ticket.
Before we get to the border it starts to rain. A squall off the ocean, Camille says. She expected it. She heard the tide warnings on the radio. “If it gets much worse, we might have to pull over.”
She has the windshield wipers on high — pretend, but I can imagine them sweeping over the glass.
Camille is all scrunched up behind the wheel now. Her nose almost touches it as she leans forward and watches the pretend red taillights ahead of us. She’s very good at preventing accidents. More than once on our pretend trips she has driven off the road to avoid a bad driver. We’ve never flipped over or hit a tree, although we’ve come close.
All our trips go wrong. We never end up where we plan. Even a calm trip to the supermarket turns into a race for our lives.
“Whoever’s after us wants us dead,” Camille will say. She’ll press harder on the gas. She’ll grip the steering wheel until her knuckles are white. And she’ll shout orders at me, “Duck!” Or, if her attention is needed somewhere else, “Grab the wheel!” This, when she pretend-shoots at the car behind us.
This trip is no different.
“Will you look at that,” Camille says. “We’re being followed.”
“Where?”
“Don’t turn around! Idiot! We don’t want him to know we know,” she hisses.
“It’s that green Chevy, with the Nevada license plates. He’s been with us the last ten miles. Every time I make a lane change, he changes, too.
“Damn rain,” she mutters. She turns on the high beams. “We might have to get off.”
Every time, there’s a reason to get off the freeway. Sometimes the sky’s a dark Satan. Sometimes there’s a moon. Today, Camille says, the thunderclouds will make it hard to see two feet in front of us.
Sometimes the other car will turn off its lights and coast behind us while we drive down a dead-end street.
We should keep going, I tell her. Stay on the road until we see a gas station.
Sometimes Camille will bring up the possibility of a gas station. If we could only find a gas station, she’ll say, only to find it deserted when we pull into it. Not even the bell rings.
“Who’s scared now?” Camille says.
“I’m not scared.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not as scared as you. I won’t cry.”
This morning Camille cried. She locked herself in our bedroom and told me to leave her alone. She played the radio, singing over Britney Spears. She had it up really loud and still I heard only her voice.
Walt got her for eating the last bit of Cheerios for breakfast. That’s what set him off, but really it was because last night Camille bit him. She kicked his shins and yelled to wake the dead. When our mother stumbled into our bedroom, Walt told her Camille had a nightmare.
This morning he chased her around the kitchen and out the front door. Mrs. Pitts was in her front yard clipping the wisteria bush.
“I hate Mrs. Pitts,” Camille said. I hate her, too.
All our high-speed chases, every shoot-out and game of chicken turn out the same. The man after us is wearing a ski mask or a Halloween costume. We can’t see his face, not until the end, after we’ve killed him and Camille takes off his mask to reveal his identity. He’s either slumped over the wheel in the driver’s seat and Camille has to use all her strength to push him back so she can peel off his ski cap and see who he is. Or he’s thrown clear of the car and lies mangled, arms and legs everywhere, according to Camille, and she rolls him over and takes off his mask and there he is: an old boyfriend of our mother’s.
We get out of the car and walk over to where the body was thrown clear.
“Look at that,” Camille says. “His arm is missing.” She scans the driveway. “You see it anywhere?”
“No.”
I let Simon out with us. I watch him walk through the grass toward the Portsmiths’ backyard.
Camille crouches down beside the body and takes a long time straightening his head. “A clown’s mask,” she says, then peels it off.
It’s Walt.
“He’s a dirty SOB,” Camille says. “I don’t like him.”
She rubs her palms like she’s trying to clean them under water.
“Now we can get our skirts,” I say.
I really want an orange wrap skirt and a string of different-color beads that tell the future. I want to keep pretending. To see how far Camille will go. Lately, our trips end after she lets her hate loose.
“I don’t care about the skirts,” Camille says.
“I do.”
“Then drive yourself.”
“I don’t know how to drive.”
She walks away and I see the backs of her legs just below the hem of her yellow sundress. Purple and blue hand marks where Walt got her.
“You need to learn. I’ll show you.”
Camille gets Simon from where he’s sitting on the edge of the Portsmiths’ yard, then gets in on the passenger side. She puts Simon on her lap and keeps him there by holding onto his scruff. He stretches his back and purrs as she pets him.
“Put the key in the ignition.” She pretends to put the car in neutral. “Now, start and we’re off.”
I make sure to steer clear of the place where we left Walt. Camille likes to run her victims over. She does this whooping like a warrior Indian.
Now she’s crying. I tell her she’s going to ruin her makeup. She’s always careful about that. She doesn’t want to look like our mother looks when she cries, like she has two black eyes.
She pulls our father’s handkerchief from her purse and wipes her face.
“It doesn’t smell like him anymore,” she says.