ANYA LIFTIG

Cheryl

When I was about eight, and my dad used to ask me to go with him to our local convenience store, the Merritt Superette, so he could buy a pouch of Captain Black pipe tobacco, I felt pretty rad.

I’d climb into the back of his blue Dodge Colt, pull a seatbelt out from the scary place between the cushions, then wipe off the moist tobacco flecks stuck to my palms.

The Superette wasn’t far. It was just a bend in the road, really, and had a package store and a donut shop next to it. Across the street was a house that looked like the kind of place someone’s old aunt lived in, but it was a bar, a place my parents said was for adults only.

Every single time my dad and I pulled up to the Superette, as he gave the Colt a little extra gas and swung its weak wheels fast into the parking lot, he’d say the same thing.

“You know, they say Marylin Monroe used to come in there every Sunday morning when she was up in Weston living with Arthur Miller. They say she’d come in and she wouldn’t be wearing a bra. Marylin Monroe without a bra. Now isn’t that something else?”

Then he’d look up into the rearview mirror at me until I realized I was supposed to respond.

“Wow. That really is something else, Dad.”

I had no idea why this was anything that anyone would bother to remember.

The Superette was lined with dirty linoleum; ancient ice cream sandwiches were chiseled into the deep freeze. It felt like a stop on a train you weren’t sure you should have gotten on.

“Get yourself something,” my dad would say. “Maybe a toy? Get something for your sister too.”

I’d go to the back of the store and look at the mostly random pieces of plastic encased in more random pieces of plastic attached to helpless pieces of cardboard. They had toys for girls and toys for boys. The boys had cap guns with red circles of shot and blobs of small soldiers in mesh bags. We girls were offered beauty kits: plastic lipsticks, melted combs, nails you wore like claws.

And after my dad bought a few too many scratch-off tickets and I whined for a stale Charleston Chew that I was always warned might pull my teeth out, we’d get back in the car. I’d search for the belt buckle again, rub my hands of the tobacco, and head home, the Colt’s exhaust curling at our backs.

***

Her name was Cheryl and she drove a white BMW convertible.

She was the same age as my mom, but she was fancier. If you pulled her shirt away from her neck, or her waistband away from her stomach, you’d see an expensive label.

I remember Cheryl coming to pick her daughter, Amanda, up from playing after school with my little sister, Allyson. Amanda lived just around the corner from us and could have easily walked home, but stay at home moms in the 1980s, especially those with BMWs, drove their children everywhere, even just around the corner.

I remember that Allyson and Amanda were cute when they played together: my Little Ponies, Rainbow Brite, Puffalumps. I remember that Amanda sometimes wore white, and I remember that I was afraid that because she was in our house, where spills and stains and sloppy mistakes were always happening, she would get dirty and then never come back again. I remember thinking how sad that would be for Allyson, because Amanda really did seem like a nice girl.

And so did her mom, with her prosperous neck.

***

We had announcements every morning in 6th grade. Our dean, Dr. Hunter, the first person I ever heard the term man-boobs applied to, would come on the loudspeaker and say things that were probably important but that I never could remember. Then we would stand up, turn towards the flag, say the pledge of allegiance, and commence our adolescent warfare.

But on this day after we said the pledge, our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Morehouse, told us to sit back down.

Dr. Hunter came back on the loudspeaker.

“I have some sad news to report. Cheryl Vander, mother of Danny and Amanda Vander, passed away last night. We are all very sorry for the Vander family’s loss and we will be providing support to anyone that would like to speak to a guidance counselor today. Please come to the main office to pick up a pass.”

What Dr. Hunter didn’t say was that Cheryl Vander had been murdered, strangled to death, her vagina set on fire, her charred torso found upright in her white BMW convertible, parked just behind the Merritt Superette.

***

The first thing that happened was that her husband denied he did it.

Then they said she was having an affair and got caught.

Then they said she was involved with a guy from the gym.

Then they said that it was someone who knew her.

Then they said it was a crime of passion.

Then they said it was about money.

Then I lost track.

***

I was part of a group of middle schoolers taken to another school across town once a week for a gifted program, but to get there, you had to take a bus. And the bus went right by the Superette. It didn’t just go by the Superette, it took a full lazy curve around it, giving you a spread wide-open view of the parking lot behind the store.

I didn’t want to ride the bus anymore. I didn’t want to see where Allyson’s friend’s mom, the one who washed and folded her spotless wide wale corduroy pants, had her vagina lit on fire. I didn’t want to think of how side-ponytailed Amanda heard the news, what she now saw when she closed her eyes, what she thought about when she was alone.

We had no supervisors on the ride across town, so the 6th grade boys, who filled the bus with smells of sweat and spunk, played football the entire ride. I always sat in the middle of the bus, quiet, looking out the window, while they tackled or tried to tackle each other, crying out “Ow! My nutsack!” every so often.

A week after Cheryl’s murder, I was on the bus. We passed the pink brick elementary school where we learned to play the xylophone and made construction paper pilgrims at Thanksgiving. The firehouse was on the right, where our brave firemen sometimes waved at us before school. We passed the flower shop where our fathers bought rose bouquets for our mothers, and Willowbrook Cemetery, where only a few months earlier my parents had bought adjoining plots. Until then, I don’t think I knew love could be eternal.

As we started to round the corner, even the horny boys quieted, knowing we were almost at the horrible place. Then, in the distance, first the gas pumps, then the awning of the donut shop, then the edge of the neon package store sign.

I held my breath and bit down hard on my tongue as we faced the front of the Merritt Superette. Then, the curve spread wide, and we could see the parking lot, the last thing Cheryl saw before she was set on fire.

I turned my face away, squinted into the distance to blot the image out of my brain.

Tim Kneel, a boy so sinister he seemed to have crawled out of a cotton-mouthed swamp, saw me. That year he had taken a special interest in terrorizing me, pushing hand-drawn pictures of sex acts on my desk in math class when the teacher couldn’t see. Pictures of people doing things I didn’t know people did.

“Are you scared, Anya?”

I didn’t reply. I’d learned that it was better not to say anything with Tim Kneel. Also better not to look at him directly in the eyes.

“Don’t worry, when I come for you, I won’t forget the BBQ sauce. Oh yeah, got all sorts of flavors for you, Liftig. Hickory Smoked Sweet Baby Anya Ribs Sauce!”

He snatched the stack of papers in my lap, a literary magazine our class worked on for an entire year was on the top. I was proud to be Editor in Chief, proud to have worked so hard to make our magazine perfect.

Tim Kneel spent the rest of the day scribbling all over my copy, occasionally looking over at me sitting quietly with my friends and letting out a terrifying, self-satisfied chuckle.

As I walked out of the room to go to the bathroom, he stuck out his leg to trip me. “Don’t think you can outrun me, Liftig. I promise not to forget the BBQ sauce.”

He tossed my copy of the literary magazine back to me on the ride back to our school. He had scrawled “DON’T FORGET THE BBQ SAUCE!!!!” on the cover and randomly through the pages. Each one became a portal to his demonic fantasy, to the constant threat of violence I was learning was just another part of being a woman.

As we rounded the corner by the Superette again, I looked hard at the spot where they found Cheryl’s burned body.

Now I could see the scorch marks.