Free Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke

coquettish turn. “I saw Madison and all these men were rubbing themselves against her.”
    I frowned. The dream was made up, the details too self-conscious, the meaning obvious—she was trying to lead me into talking about Madison. I wondered if everything she had said before was a strategy to mellow me, make me congenial to the upcoming interrogation. My unease showed and Pig's forehead wrinkled.
    “Why are you so negative? It doesn't do you any good,” she said. “Did you find her or not?”
    If I looked into her eyes I'd be able to tell if she was lying, but this seemed cruel, so I walked to the window, looking toward the men in orange vests working on the BART tracks.
    “Come on,” Pig said, annoyed. “I've got to know.”
    I turned toward her. “She said you're not her mother.”
    Pig looked startled. “I was her mother!” she said in a high voice.
    “Was?” I asked, walking over so I could look down at her restless face, all her features on one level like she had melted.
    Her eyes became wide and wet, she fiddled with her wedding ring and another ring with a big obsidian stone.
    “Well, I didn't actually have her.”
    “She's adopted?” I asked.
    “Sort of,” she said. Her eyes were unfocused, she was trying to decide what to tell me.
    “What about your husband?”
    Pig waved her hand. “He was long gone by then.” She shrugged. “I don't think he would have been jealous anyway.”
    “You mean you had me track down your girlfriend?” I felt angry that Pig had lied to me.
    “She was more my daughter than my girlfriend.” Pig was getting flustered, the emotional complexity of her relationship with Madison was indescribable even to herself.
    “Tell me what happened?” I asked.
    Her eyes welled. “It's different than what I told you.” She shifted and the bed swayed. “I saw her hanging around the big squat down the block; Mexican boys with skateboards and a few skinny white girls. She was eating out of the garbage, getting high, sleeping with everyone. Her hair was dyed blond, a good inch of brown at the roots. I saw her with this real evil-looking guy. Once they were smoking pot on the porch and he yelled at me to mind my own business, said I was a busybody. I couldn't care less about their drug problem, it was Madison who fascinated me. One day I gave her a cling-wrapped sandwich out of my grocery bag, then a couple apples, a bunch of little Costa Rican bananas, once a whole ham. It got so she would look for me. Finally one Sunday she rang my bell and asked if I needed any housecleaning done. She had cigarette bums on the backs of her hands and a big patch of hair was gone, her skin was raw and pink as salmon.”
    Pig smiled, but then remembered herself and looked to see if the story had touched me. It was hard for me to believe anything Pig said now.
    “Did she seem curious about me?”
    “She doesn't want to see you,” I said.
    Squinting her eyes, Pig pulled her loose features into a suspicious point. “Does she want to see you?”
    Pig waited for an answer. Maybe Madison did, though I had no evidence to prove it. And besides, I didn't feel like I owed an explanation. I was disillusioned with Pig because she had lied, because she had used me, and because she seemed so pitiful now. She was a liar and a coward, so afraid that she was trying to make a safety net of her false connection with Madison.
    “I know you're going to see her,” Pig said. “Madison has a way of getting into your head.” Her eyes moved around the room, as if the curtains or her hairbrush could help her.
    I walked to the door, feeling dismal, concentrating on the open space in the hall and the darker spot down the stairwell.
    “Don't you say anything!” Pig yelled from her bed. “You don't know what happened!”
    F ROM DOWN THE BLOCK I SAW THE LITTLE MAN COME OUT OF our apartment building. He ducked his head, looking cautiously around, hardly inconspicuous with that red hair. I wanted to be invisible, to