Lousiana Hotshot

because that was what she did when she was on the bus— make up stories about the people, try to put herself in their houses, in their marriages, feel what it must be like to be them. She had a notebook full of thoughts and observations and three or four drafts of poems, but since she’d gotten the car, she’d sort of forgotten about the project. She thought about it on her way home and felt ashamed.
    And yet this was no night to write. Her mind was in such a swivet she could barely focus long enough to find the fare, much less to think literary thoughts. She should never have gotten into that discussion with Tony Tino— and not just because it was stupid and embarrassing. Because she couldn’t get the damned movie out of her head.
    Another thing she shouldn’t have done— referred to it as a movie. It was running over and over, an endless loop, and everything was different. She knew perfectly well what repressed memory syndrome was, and also knew some people said it didn’t exist. She could see the problem.
    There was no doubt in her mind that what she was seeing was real, it was someplace she’d been, something she’d seen, but she also knew that it was both embellished and diminished. It was clear to her that her imagination was filling in blanks, adding details, and also that her mind was withholding data. For instance, in the first flashback, the shot, the unbearable loud noise, had come
after
she saw the body. Therefore, she concluded, her brain had simply provided it because it ought to be there.
    Sometimes now, when the movie ran, it came before, but that, she figured, was because she knew it ought to go there.
Perhaps there were two shots,
she thought. Whichever it was, this wasn’t a detail added by an overwrought imagination. She had most assuredly heard that shot. She knew by the way she felt about it. By the terror; by the bafflement; most of all, by the sorrow— the inconsolable sense of regret.
    So either there were two shots, or she’d remembered the sequence incorrectly. In that case, what else was wrong? Not that it mattered much— there weren’t really enough details to piece together a story. She couldn’t tell one thing about the body except that it was bleeding. Maybe it had on jeans. Had her father worn jeans? She wasn’t even sure of that. And she couldn’t say why except that the memory-movie was like a dream, in which you
know
you’re with a particular person, yet he looks entirely different from the way he actually looks; in which things sometimes appear three-dimensional and perfectly normal, except that when you try to remember later, all you recall is an impression. This was like that. An impression.
    Why the hell,
she thought,
did Corey say it happened when I was two— and the death certificate says five years later?
    She kept playing the movie. Sure enough, she had the definite sense of being very young, almost infinitesimal. Was it something to do with height, with how far above the floor she seemed? That was crazy.
    She closed her eyes and tried to think of something else.
    And when the movie came again, she saw something different. Looking down at the floor, she could see a shoe tossed carelessly near the chair, as if the owner were a child who had simply left it there. It was her own shoe— one she remembered perfectly. A pink sandal, half of a pair she’d had the summer before first grade. Now that made
no
sense— she hadn’t had the shoes at either age, two
or
seven.
    She had no idea if it had been there all the time, or if her overactive brain, abhorring a vacuum, had thoughtfully filled it in.
    She went in and stood in the shower a long time, hoping to get her balance back.
    She chose her clothes carefully. She had the distinct feeling her brother’s wife hated the way she dressed, but she could hardly change her personality just for the evening— Darryl would never speak to her again.
    She chose an ankle-length dress in deep green, the most conservative thing she owned, accessorized it with a full-length flowing jacket in an African print, six-inch-wide orange-beaded belt, and three or four silver necklaces. Looking in the mirror, she thought,
Oh, well
and quoted herself aloud:
    I am the Baroness de Pontalba and
Michelle
can kiss my aristocratic black ass.
    For good measure, she turned around and mooned her own reflection.
    Darryl was in the kitchen with Miz Clara, sitting at the old black-painted table that Talba suddenly realized she really ought to