“Well she is from West Virginia and she is a real sweetheart. They came to Milwaukee when she was younger, and she was just lovely. You’re gonna have fun with her.”
“What’s her name again?” Mumble mumbled.
“Billi May. Kid, she is your second cousin. These are Grandma’s people. These are Canny folk, and they are a bit different,” Rose said.
“Different how?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” Less muttered.
“Well, they are good Christian people,” she said. “They are good people. Just real good, hard working people that made their money in the coal mines and built a real good life out there. Good people. Be on your best behavior.” She was excited. So excited.
“Mommy, are we good people?” I asked.
Her hand was a whip with fingernails when it sliced around from the front passenger seat to slash across my face. “Of course we are good people. Don’t be stupid. It’s just that—”
“They’re better,” Mumble said.
Rose stuck her thumbnail in her mouth and chewed on it as she turned to look out the window. “They’re not better, they are just Christian and we are not. Just keep your mouth in check, Mumble.”
He raised a waving hand but said nothing.
“You kids use your manners. What do we say?”
I had trouble remembering, but I spit them all out good enough to not get slapped.
Yes, sir.
No, sir.
Yes, ma’am.
No, ma’am.
Thank you.
Please.
Excuse me.
“If you have to fart!” Mumble said with a chuckle. Rose backhanded his arm but let out a tiny chuckle.
“Be serious. These people matter. They are Canny people. Mom’s people.”
They all walked into the kitchen where Grandpa Stone sat with a cigarette and no whiskey. He wore a button up the front shirt instead of his wife beater and he looked furious about it. Grandma was flitting everywhere. She was posing for pictures and everyone was talking except Stone.
Wrath wasn’t there. Ball was not in the room. I figured he was upstairs and I would get to go up there soon, but first I had to meet people and hug them and let Rose tell them how good a boy I was. Me and Cage had been in a fight with a neighbor kid and I had slammed his head against a brick wall that afternoon, but here I was being praised for being a good boy. Less had evaporated and Rose was in no hurry to call her to center stage.
All of it was going well until Grandpa Stone asked, “How’s Precipice?” He smashed out his cigarette and stood. “Why isn’t she here?”
Silence. Grandma looked about to cry, and finally one of her sisters stepped forward. “Actually Stone, she told us to give you a gift.” She turned to a teenager. “Will you go get the gift that Aunt Precipice sent us with for Stone?”
The room stayed silent until the box was set before him. Rose had Mumble’s hand in a vise grip as Grandpa pulled his pocket knife and sliced open the sizable box. He unwrapped the large object inside and found a statue.
It was the statue of a squaw looking lovingly at the swaddled baby in her arms. It had been hand painted, and it came with a letter Stone read aloud.
“I know your heart is not at its best. I wanted you to have this. I hope it reminds you of me. When you die, have my sister send it back to me.” Stone stood, lit another cigarette, and wrapped a thick arm around the statue. He turned and walked off. He did not come back all night.
That is when I saw her and ran. I saw Billi May, and as soon as I looked at her, I turned and ran. I ran to my favorite hiding spot in that house. I ran to the candy table. It was big enough to be roomy beneath, and it had a great circular table cloth for its great circular top that dropped all the way to the floor. It was set against the side of a love seat, so I could crawl underneath and sit with my back to the couch’s side, curl my knees up to my chin, and go quiet while my head tried to figure out what I had just seen.
All of the butter was off the ball at this point. I had been running the streets with Cage and Tigress for over a year and all my baby weight was a memory. Ball and Wrath still called me fat, and they called me an ugly baby so many times that I had found all my infant pictures and tore them up. Had found all of Grandma’s copies and torn them up, too. Now my face wasn’t gross, and I wasn’t fat anymore, but the things our heroes say to us never really go away.
I saw her painted fingernails first as she peeled the table cloth up and peeked in at me.
“Jesse, are you hiding from me?” Billi May said.
“Yes. Sorry. Please, ma’am. I mean, excuse me, but no thank you.”
I realized I had snapped my eyes shut when I saw her peek her head under the table. She touched my chin lightly and lifted my gaze to her. “Open them,” she whispered.
I obeyed.
“Why are you scared of me?”
Now I think it is time we have a brief discussion about Country Girls. They possess a handicap that charges with them so much destructive power that they are, like this one, terrifying to look at when you’re a city boy street rat and unprepared.
City girls live near malls. They have all of the perfect clothing shops. Even if they can’t afford them, they can get hand-me-downs or shop at discount shops. Country Girls do not have that option. They simply do not possess the means to buy the latest fashions or the perfect trend. They do not spend all their time indoors, and they are sassy. When you are looking at a city girl, you see a girl with every option. When you are looking at a country girl…
Well fuck.
I could never prepare myself for Billi May. Her hair was short to the shoulder and bobbed. Her makeup perfect, but all wrong. She was not trying to look like an ’80s glam girl. She was doing something very different. Her shirt was small, almost like a football jersey, but cut short at the stomach and loose. It was not tight to her lean muscled body but flowed around her. Her shorts had been jeans but the country wears and tears on a pair of jeans, and sooner or later they become shorts. She had tennis shoes that were even wrong. They were not clean at all, and everyone in the city knows you take an old toothbrush to your new shoes to keep them presentable.
I thought I knew exactly what a girl was supposed to look like—and I did. But my seven-year-old, city boy experience had not in the least prepared me for Billi May.
She slipped under the table. “Squooch,” she said. I moved over and she ducked under the table with me. She leaned against the love seat and turned to look at me.
“I don’t want to kiss you or nothin,” I blurted out. “Ma’am, and excuse me.”
“We are cousins, sweetie. We are not supposed to be kissing.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m a good boy. You can ask your mom, she was told.”
“First things first.” She crossed her legs and turned to look at me. “Why are you hiding from me?”
“You’re pretty.”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“You’re too old for me, and that is not right, because I don’t want to kiss you, because we are cousins, and—”
“You think I am too pretty to be around?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh my god, that is the sweetest thing I have ever heard.” She wrapped her arms around me in a hug and she sighed. “You are my favorite relative of all time. Do you know that? How old are you?”
“Seven.”
“Well, I am sixteen.” She kept talking but I couldn’t hear her. Sixteen put her in Uncle Ball’s age range. She was talking and I should be listening, but I could not imagine the horror of listening to Uncle Ball describe sexing her. I wanted to warn her—was at the point of tears—but I could only look at her and try to focus on her words.
“Handsome,” she said.
“You think I am handsome?” I grunted. I looked at my feet and shook my head. “I’m not handsome.”
“My God, you so are. You are adorable, and when you get older, the girls are going to be crawling all over each other scratching eyes and pulling hair to get to you.”
“Uncle Ball and Uncle Wrath say I am fat and ugly.”
Her face froze. “Ball!” Her voice did a thing I had never heard before when she was talking. But when she screamed his name, it roared that new sound. Her angry twang was a thing of myth and the entire house fell silent. “Ball, get your skinny ass over here right now!”
He pulled up the tablecloth and grinned in. She spun on him and slapped him.
He pulled back, confused and scared.
“How dare you look at this boy and tell him he is fat and ugly! How dare you look at a family member and say such a thing! I’ll kick your ass. I will make you believe.”
“Sorry Billi May, but you didn’t see him when he was born. Looked like a pizza had been dragged a quarter mile and—”
She slapped him again. “This is your nephew. Your godson. Don’t you ever say anything like that again ever or I will come back and I will find you! I swear before God on his throne, I will beat you into dog shit if you ever say that to this boy again.” Her voice was flipping and swaying and bucking like a bronco rider at a rodeo.
“Sorry, Jesse. You know we were only kidding about that stuff, right?” he said.
My chin was quivering, and I was just trying not to cry in front of this pretty girl.
“Right?” His eyes bore into me and he nodded. “You always knew we were kidding about all that ugly stuff, right?”
“Uh, yeah. You were just kidding.” I looked at my feet.
“Billi, you gotta grab your stuff. My friends will be here in a few seconds,” Ball said.
“Say sorry.”
“I’m sorry, little man. You know how much I love you.”
“And I love you too, Uncle Ball.”
“Go on now, Billi. They are probably waiting outside.”
She crawled away and he shoved his way in.
“God, she is a piece of ass, isn’t she? Damn I just want to hear her call out to the Lord. Look, she is my cousin, but she is my second cousin, so I might be able to pull it off.”
I wanted to hold my ears closed and scream. I wanted to claw my eyes out so I would not picture the things he was about to say.
“So I had my friend Metal Head drive, and his car is tiny, and she will have to snuggle up with me in the back and sit on my lap. Then I can judge how comfortable she is. We are going to dinner, then a movie, then we are going to go on a drive, and when I get her back here, she will be sleeping in my bed, and I will be on the floor.
“The night will be magical and I know I can get something out of her, but it doesn’t count if I can’t fuck her. Wish me luck.”
He grabbed me by my right shoulder and smiled at me. “Gotta keep working. Can’t get sloppy. That’s how you fall in love.”
Saw her again the summer between my junior and senior year. Went to West Virginia for a family reunion. She met me and she did remember me. She asked me if they ever insulted me again and I grinned at her and told her they were afraid to. She looked at me, hugged me, and Billi May said, “I bet they are.”
She looked like a mom. Mostly because she was one. But the face, the hair, the sweet defending country girl was forever tarnished for me.
Ball never told me how his conquest went. But he told me about his other cousins.
Jesse Teller 
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