Midnight Bayou

dark dread.
    “I went downstairs first, and that handsome young man behind the bar said you were still up here. Why, I’m so glad to catch you!” The voice was a bright bubble that bounced and jerked in the air. “Let me just look at you! I swear, I swear you just get prettier every time I see you. Sweetie pie, I just have to sit down a minute and catch my breath. I’m just so excited to see you, I can hardly stand it.”
    She talked too fast, Lena noted, walked too fast on thespiked backless heels she’d paired with hot-pink and skin-tight capris. Those were warnings that she’d taken a hit of her current drug of choice very recently.
    “Look what you’ve done with this place!” Lilibeth dropped into a chair and dumped a floral suitcase beside her. She clapped her hands like a child so the plastic bracelets on her bony wrists banged together. “Why, I just love it. Suits you, baby. It sure does suit you.”
    She’d been pretty once, Lena thought as she studied her mother. She’d seen pictures. But all that prettiness had been carved down, diamond-hard, to canny.
    At forty-four, Lilibeth’s face showed all the wear from too much liquor, too many pills and far too many men.
    Deliberately, Lena left the door open and remained standing just inside it. The sound of traffic, the scent of the bakery across the street, kept her grounded. “What do you want?”
    “Why, to see you, of course.” Lilibeth let out a trill of laughter that scraped over Lena’s brain like nails on a blackboard. “What a thing to ask. I got such a yen to see you, baby. I said to myself, My Lena’s busy, but we’ve just got to have a little time together. So I got myself on a bus, and here I am. You just have to sit on down here, honey, and tell me everything you’ve been up to.”
    Disgust rolled through her, and Lena clung to it. Better disgust than the despair that crept along just under it. “I have work.”
    “Oh now, you can take a little while for your own mama. After all, you own the place. I’m just so proud of my baby, all grown up and running your own business.
    “Doing so well for yourself, too,” she continued as she looked around the room.
    Lena caught the look, and the cunning in it. It tightened her chest, and stiffened her spine. “I told you the last time it was the last time. You won’t get any money from me again.”
    “Why do you want to hurt my feelings like that?” Lilibeth widened her eyes as they filled with tears. “I just want to spend a few days with my little girl.”
    “I’m not a little girl,” Lena said dully. “Yours in particular.”
    “Don’t be mean, honey, after I’ve come all this way just to see you again. I know I haven’t been a good mama to you, darling, but I’m going to make it up.”
    She jumped up, pressing a hand to her heart. The nail on the pinkie of her right hand was very long, slightly curved.
    Coke nail, Lena realized without shock or regret. Now she knew Lilibeth’s current drug of choice.
    “I made some mistakes, I know I did, honey.” Lilibeth’s voice rang with apology, with regret. “You gotta understand, I was just so young when you came along.”
    “You’ve used that one up.”
    Lilibeth dug into her shiny red purse, pulled out a tattered tissue. “Why you wanna be so hard on your mama, baby girl? Why you wanna hurt my heart?”
    “You don’t have a heart. And you’re not my mama.”
    “Carried you inside me for nine months, didn’t I?” Sorrow became temper as if a switch had been flicked. Lilibeth’s voice rose, shrilled. “Nine months of being sick and fat and stuck back that damn bayou. Lay there in pain for hours giving birth to you.”
    “And left me within a week. An alley cat spends more time with its litter than you did with me.”
    “I was sixteen.”
    It was that, the sad fact of it, that had caused Lena to make room, time and time again, in her heart. Until her heart had simply calcified from the blows. “You haven’t been sixteen in quite a while. Neither have I. I’m not going to waste time arguing about it. I have to work, and you have to go.”
    “But, baby.” Panicked, Lilibeth shifted, back to theteary, choked voice. “You’ve got to give me a chance to make things right. I’m going to get me a job. I can work for you awhile, won’t that be fun? I’ll just stay here with you for a couple weeks till I find a place of my own. We’ll have such a fine time. Just like girlfriends.”
    “No, you won’t work