He nods without looking up, repeating a phrase he keeps stumbling over.
Inside, I slip into my parents’ room, grab the yellow legal pad and take it into the bathroom. There must be more here for me to decipher, some image I can discern to tell me what is causing my mother’s anguish. I need to know. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I run my finger under each scribbled-out word. My mother has been sure to eradicate any bits of meaning with her deeply drawn scratches over her words. I wonder if she did this more for herself than for my brother or me if we found the notepad. I place the paper close to my eyes, study the curl of her cursive writing. Finally, the words fingernails and intestines appear. I try to place the words together into a scene in my mind. Nothing materializes but an obscure sense of dread.
A shrill scream sounds from the next room. I run to the bedroom, gripping the notepad between my fingers. My father comes in after me, followed by my brother, who must have been woken up by the screams. When my father hits the lights, we see the blood. We’re all frozen at the sight of blood pouring out of my mother’s mouth between screams. She’s sitting up and the blood stains her blue nightgown, the bedsheets, and is spreading over the wooden floor. She still seems to be dreaming. Job moans loudly from the corner of the room, eyes gaping up to heaven.
My father wakes from his stupor and begins soaking up the blood with a bedsheet. I move toward my mother, screaming for her to wake up. I drop the legal pad on the floor. My father covers my mother’s mouth with the white top sheet—blood streaks over the fabric. Now my brother and I are both shouting for our mother to wake up from her dream. When my father moves the bedsheet from my mother’s lips, blood splatters on the floorboards. My brother screams, “No!” Job wails. I realize I’m crying. All the muscles in my body tighten—my veins feel like they’ll rupture. Before the ambulance arrives, before my mother is taken to the hospital, before she is given morphine and allowed to sleep free from her nightmares, I stare down at the notepad where a drop of spattered blood now blooms across the yellow paper.
XVI
I shouldn’t go, but in the morning when I wake before everyone else, I get on my bike and make the long ride into town, past the lake contaminated with mercury and up the dirt hill beyond the gravel pit to where I stand next to the Pinewood Estates sign, overlooking the trailer park where my family used to live, and if we’re not lucky, we’ll return. Sunlight flickers off the sheet metal roofs of the trailers in their tight rows. I shade my eyes with my hand to survey the park. After my brother broke his fist on Josh Roy’s cheekbone, I fear what will happen if I get caught. But here I am.
On the bike ride over, I told myself that I needed to be there for Taylor, that she needs a protector before her mom gets another boyfriend. I told myself that we had a deep connection through pain and loss that demanded I go to her. Beneath the layers of these thoughts is the pulsing memory of our kiss and the way her flesh felt under the thin fabric of her T-shirt, and beneath this is the deep seed of shame that what I am doing will lead me to burn for eternity.
I stare down into the park and realize that I don’t know which trailer she lives in or how I’m going to find her, short of knocking on doors. All I have is the rumor that she’s here with her mother. I search over the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of her dirty-blond hair, a flash of her white sneakers as she runs between trailers. The park is quiet. The only movement is three dogs wandering a back street—probably strays that live in the forest behind the park and survive on trash.
It will be better to move through the park on foot, so I hide my bike in a grove of trees behind the sign. I remove a baseball hat from my backpack and place the bag next to the bike. Pulling the hat low on my forehead, I walk toward the park. I don’t want to be recognized. I’m not sure what Josh Roy or his father will do if they catch me, especially if Josh’s father is still drunk from last night like he’d sometimes be on weekend mornings when we lived in the park. He once beat Josh for waking him while playing football in the street. As he kicked Josh’s ass up the steps into the trailer, he slurred his words and nearly fell off the porch before he got Josh in the house. When he’s sober, though, he can be kind, even gentle. I don’t want to take my chances to see how he feels today.
On summer mornings, most park kids hang out at the playground by the basketball courts. Taylor is my age, but there’s still a chance she’ll be there with the older kids, smoking weed from metal pipes.
The park is peaceful as I walk through the silent streets. Dust from the gravel pit coats my throat. A couple kids scream as they run around the playground, but I don’t see Taylor. Kids her age sit on a bench, passing a forty-ounce container of beer back and forth. I consider approaching them to ask if they know Taylor, but I recognize a couple of the kids, so I keep walking.
I move down the back road by the woods. I decide I’ll cut up and down each street until I find her, stopping before I reach the far end where our old trailer sits.
When I get to the end of the third street, I begin to doubt this entire endeavor. I’ll need to be home before my parents wake up and start dressing for church. My father is probably already up, and I’ll have to lie about where I’ve been when I get home. I’m contemplating leaving the park when a green car drives toward me. As it gets close, I recognize the pregnant woman who lives in our old trailer.
“Hey there,” she says, stopping the car in the road. “I didn’t expect to see you again.” She smiles and shades her eyes from the bright morning sun.
“Just visiting a friend,” I say.
“How’s your brother doing?” she asks.
“His hand’s broken. He has a cast.”
“I’m sorry,” she says and I nod. We stare at each other for a moment without talking. She smiles again and places her car in gear.
The car starts to creep away, and I yell, “Wait.” I run to her window and ask, “Do you know a girl named Taylor? She lives with her mother.”
“She and her mother just moved here,” she says. “She lives two streets back. Pink trailer. I see her sitting on the porch sometimes. They’re the first family to live there since we moved in.” She looks around and whispers, “They say a man hung himself in there.”
“Mr. Anderson,” I say, remembering the pink trailer. “My father used to work with him—he was cursed.”
“Oh,” the woman says, dumb with my comment. “Good luck.”
When her car disappears out of the park, I move toward the trailer.
Pink paint cleaves from the metal siding. Someone painted the trailer bright pink years ago—before Larry Anderson and his girlfriend moved in—and now flecks of blue stick out where the pink is chipping. I stand in front of the trailer, unmoving. What am I doing on Taylor’s front steps?
But we don’t choose our desires. At twelve, I can’t articulate this, but the blood flowing through my veins speaks this truth. I knock quietly on the metal door and listen to my pulse quicken behind my ears. No one answers and I knock again. A car drives by on the street, and I pull the hat down over my eyes. When the car passes, I press my face to the small window on the door and cup my eyes. The only furniture in the living room is a brown couch and a television resting on a metal stand.
I look around at the other lots near the pink trailer. It’s quiet. Compelled by the same force that thrust me to the trailer park this morning, I twist the doorknob, and the front door pushes open with a sigh. A car turns onto the street and I slip inside the pink trailer, shutting the door without a sound.
The trailer doesn’t look lived in. No dishes sit on the counter. There’s no kitchen table or chairs. I fear that Taylor doesn’t even live here, but then I see her stained white shoes by the door. The air is heavy. Dust particles spiral through the columns of sunlight cutting into the living room. The yellow carpet is faded. I get a flash of Larry Anderson in his oil-stained jeans and flannel shirt hanging from his leather belt in the middle of the ro
om, the pink slip announcing his unemployment sticking out of his back pocket. I try to shake the image, but his body sways before me as if he’s hanging here fresh for me to discover.
The sound of a clock ticking on the wall breaks my trance; it’s just after seven. My parents will soon knock on my bedroom door to wake me for church. I take a few steps deeper into the trailer. The floor beneath my feet squeaks. I move to the hallway and see three doors.
The first room I come to is the bathroom. A cigarette filter floats in the toilet. A towel is crumpled on the floor. Across from the bathroom, a bedroom door is open enough to peek inside. I press my eye to the crack.
The curtains are drawn and I can’t make out anything in the room. I ease the door open a few more inches. Sunlight breaks through a gap in the curtains. Clothes cover the red carpet. Taylor’s overall jean shorts lie on the floor next to a dresser. I discern a mattress on the floor. The light that escapes into the room reveals Taylor beneath a white sheet, sleeping. She faces the wall. The curve of her nose is pronounced. Next to her, a hairy leg sticks out from under the white sheet. Startled by the presence of this leg in Taylor’s bed, I push the door open with a squeak and light floods into the room. The body next to Taylor shifts beneath the covers, and I see the boy’s face. It’s a trailer park kid who’s in high school. A junior, maybe even a senior. He rubs the stubble on his chin with his fingertips, and I have the urge to leap into the bed and start punching his face until my knuckles fracture one at a time.
He opens his eyes and stares at me hovering over him. He doesn’t seem alarmed to see me. He must think he’s still dreaming. Taylor rolls over and now the boy is fully awake.
“What the—” he says.
I don’t answer. Taylor looks up at me and frowns.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
“Get the fuck out,” the boy says.
I give her a pleading look.
“Please,” Taylor says. “You should leave.”
I don’t move. Behind me a voice says, “What the hell’s going on?”
I turn and Taylor’s mother is standing in the hallway. Her eyes are puffy; she squints against the morning light. Lipstick is smeared on her cheek. A lit cigarette rests between her fingers. She wears only a T-shirt and underwear.
I look back at Taylor. “Please,” she mouths.
The boy leaps from the bed. He’s naked—his body sways back and forth. He’s a foot taller than me, but I don’t care. I take a swing at his chin. He jumps to the side and pushes me against the wall. I fall to the floor. He looms over me, untroubled by his nakedness. Taylor’s mother screams from the hallway.
“Let him go,” Taylor yells.
“Get the fuck out,” the boy says. But then he leans down closer as if inspecting me. I expect him to start punching my face, but he whispers, “I know you. Your mother brings us food sometimes.”
I look away from his naked body. His hands grip my arms and he picks me up. I don’t try to fight. My head aches from where it smashed into the wall. He steadies me on my feet.
“You need to leave,” he says, calm again. He sits on the bed and covers his crotch with the white bedsheet.
Taylor sits up in bed and says, “He was just here to see if I wanted to smoke cigarettes out at the park. I forgot we had a plan this morning.”
“Why the fuck did he try to punch me?”
“He was scared,” Taylor says.
The boy looks at me, waiting for what Taylor said to be confirmed. “It’s true,” I say. “I’ll go.”
“See you later,” Taylor says in a bright voice that almost sounds like she means what she’s saying. I don’t respond as I leave the room. Her mother is pissing with the bathroom door open when I walk by.
“Scared the shit out of me,” she rasps as she pulls toilet paper off the roll and wipes herself.
I dart through the living room where Larry Anderson hung himself, out the front door and into the summer morning. I run to the street and keep going. The slap of my sneakers on the pavement echoes against the metal trailers along the road. When I reach the edge of the park, my eyes stop at a white bra on a clothesline, rising and falling in the wind. Ripping the bra from its wooden clothespin, I race to the woods where I stashed my bike. I start down the dirt road, and the bra flaps in the wind like a flag. I shove the bra into my mouth and grind my teeth against the foam cups and metal underwire. The plastic clasps smack against my face. Then I remember that today is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and I’ll need to be at church early to help the new priest prepare the mass.
XVII
The No Swimming sign has been spray painted over with the word whore in red paint. I lay my bike on the concrete boat ramp and look out at the polluted lake. The sun slinks behind the boarded-up convent on the hill, and the lake surface ripples with pinks and blues. I slip my off-brand sneakers over my heels and peel off my socks. Barefoot, I drop my backpack on the boat ramp and remove my T-shirt. Dandelions shoot up through the cracks in the concrete ramp. Few people launch their boats here anymore now that the town has deemed the water and every living thing in it contaminated—acid rain clouds from Midwest smokestacks drift over the mountains to deliver their mercury poison.
I cradle the backpack against my chest and step down the inclined boat ramp into the water. Sharp rocks dig into my heels and arches.
The water is warm from the hot summer. The cool evening air makes me shiver as I move deeper into the warm water. When it’s over my waist, I stop. On the road, car headlights click on. Lake water licks the bottom of my blue backpack. If I wasn’t sure I’d need it for the start of school in a couple of weeks, I’d submerge the backpack and watch it slowly disappear beneath the black water with its secrets. But with my father’s layoff and the inconsistent work he gets in Tennessee, I’m certain I won’t get a new one in the fall.
I unzip the bag, and its contents spill out: white, brown, yellow, purple and pink bras—blue, black, orange and white women’s underwear. The evidence of my depravity; the flames of my desire.
In the silent cool of the evening, I turn the bag over, dumping the contents into the water. The silken bras and underwear sit on the still surface as if by some morbid miracle. I heave my nylon bag back onto the shore—it skids across the boat ramp until it hits my bike. The undergarments slowly undulate with the water as they spread out around me. The charred fabric of an eggshell blue bra moves toward me, and I push it away with a splash of the water.
Soon, I’m enclosed in a circle of underwear and bras. I thrust them under one at a time, but they don’t sink to the bottom of the lake like I’d hoped. They stay suspended, glowing beneath the surface. In the purple riffles of the lake, my black reflection shines over the brightly colored bras and underwear. What if they wash up on the shore and everyone discovers what I’ve done? But the shame only runs through my veins at a low voltage as I watch the submerged halo of undergarments recede around me. Even when they’re gone—and they will be, I know it—they’ll never be gone.
There have been reports all summer of crippling ear infections from swimming in the lake—inner ears leaking green pus, ear drums rupturing—but still I lean back and let the water cradle my body until I’m floating. Water fills my ear canals, deadening the sound of traffic from the road to a whisper. Sweet metallic lake water splashes in my mouth. Above me the black-purple sky vibrates.
I hear the muffled sound of a voice as I stand in the water. Up on the shore, with her legs huddled against her chest, sits Taylor. I expect to feel a pang of desire or shame snap through my veins, but I feel nothing. I realize how tired I am. Around me, the bras and underwear have disappeared beneath the black surface of the lake.
“I’m thinking about leaving,” Taylor says.
“You and your mom are leaving the park?” I ask. I don’t walk out of the water to sit next to her. The acidic taste of th
e polluted lake water works over my tongue, and I spit.
“No,” she says, “I mean leaving here—alone.”
“What do you mean?” I say. “You’re a kid.”
“I don’t feel like one,” she says.
The wind picks up and cools my wet, bare shoulders—I shudder.
Taylor looks out at the traffic roaring by on the road. After a moment she turns back to me and says, “Would you leave with me? To Florida? We could hitchhike. My grandfather moved there after my grandmother died of cancer last year. He bought a house near Jacksonville. Called it a HUD house. It’s his. Says he owns it outright. He sends me postcards of palm trees and the ocean. It looks so different from here.” There’s still enough sunlight for me to see that Taylor is staring at me, unblinking, her hair over her forehead rising and falling with the wind.
Her proposition doesn’t excite me—after everything, it annoys me. “We don’t have any money,” I say. “You live in the trailer park. My family will have to go back there soon. It’s stupid—a stupid fucking idea.” I’m trying to hurt her.
Taylor tilts her head and looks at me through the oncoming darkness. “I didn’t realize until just now how young you are,” she says.
We stare at each other as cars move on the road with their headlights on. A tractor-trailer downshifts and sounds its horn. Before the horn stops, allowing us to speak, Taylor stands and runs up the boat ramp, disappearing onto the road.
Soon the Light Will Be Perfect Page 14