Annie of the Undead Read Online Free Page B

if my mother had something up her cashmere
sleeve. She wasn’t remarkably devious –in fact, she wasn’t
remarkably anything except a bitch, but life had taught me never to
underestimate anyone’s capacity for treachery, especially the
person who gives you life.
    My mother took out the compact that she carried
always in her purse and began compulsively dabbing the sticky
orange substance it contained onto her face.
    “Of all the things you could have done with your
life, the vices you could have cultivated, you had to choose,” she
almost couldn’t bring herself to say the dirty word,
“ boxing. ”
    “Right. You would have liked it better if I’d
been pregnant at thirteen, then two kids, married, and divorced by
twenty.”
    “Now you’re just one of the animals. Why
couldn’t you have just been a mooching high school dropout like so
many other kids? I never thought I’d say this, but –that little
freak who used to stay in her room all the time and watch all those
ridiculous science-whatever-you-call-it movies and draw monsters
all over her notebooks –I miss her. She was so much less of an
aggravation than you are.”
    “Sure, as long as you didn’t know she was one
dark fantasy away from going Columbine on all your asses,” I said
and took a drag.
    “Oh, Annie, put out that damned cigarette.
That’s a terrible, ugly habit.”
    “You should have thought of that when your
boyfriend Tim was smoking me out and liquoring me up to keep me
from screaming while he had his fun. Oh, but that’s right, you were
too busy the snorting lines you bought with his paper.”
    “Shut up!” she hissed. “Things are different
now. I found the Lord. He lifted me up out of darkness and filled
me with the spirit of the Holy Ghost.”
    “How nice for you. I take it the Lord came with
a lot of money.”
    She dabbed on more sludge.
    “Six point two million. Plus a house in Grosse
Pointe and a condo in the Turks and Caicos. You know what I have to
offer doesn’t come cheap.”
    The bitch had been a high-priced call girl once,
before the pregnancies and birth of her kids had made her ugly and
ruined her career. At least, that was what she had always told
Chris and I. She’d come from the country an unblemished little
redneck beauty and made big bucks with her body for a while before
we took it all away from her. It wasn’t the all the drugs she did
that used up her money and appeal. It was us.
    “That why you’re driving a mid-range sedan?”
    “I’m smart with his money. Think about it as
saving for your education. We were both hoping you would get your
GED, then maybe go to college. He knows a dean at Bryn Mawr. Maybe
we could get you in there. You could make something less
embarrassing of yourself than a boxer. Perhaps your colorful
past could be spun into sounding a little more…romantic.”
    “Don’t minimize, mythologize.”
    “Jeffrey’s planning on running for office next
year. You being in college would help our campaign.”
    A politician. So good I would never meet
him.
    “So tell me, does this one rape little
girls?”
    My mother closed the compact with a hard
snap.
    “Don’t bring your baggage into this. Jeffrey is
a man of God. He’s the one who lifted me up. He showed me the
light, like I’m trying to do for you right now.”
    “For my own good, of course.”
    She tilted her head dismissively.
    “God loves you, Annie, whatever I may think.
Just think of it that way if you hate me so much. But come back to
us. Come into the light.”
    A few flurries began to drift down from the sky.
The storm was coming. Anjelah’s wails still filled the little
street. My ears pricked at a more distant sound –that of police and
fire truck sirens a little more than a mile off. One was headed
away, the other steadily approaching. I knew which was which.
    “The light is not for me, Mother. Don’t come
looking for me again.”
    I cut out of there, at first at a walk, my
mother’s voice chasing me with its