by Miller, Mary
When they were gone, Gabe held up his hand and I slapped it, a nice solid connection as opposed to the half-misses I usually managed. He dove under and pulled my legs, the water giving him courage he wouldn’t have had on land. I came up laughing and then went under again to smooth back my hair. I wondered what his friends thought of me, if they thought I was fat. But when I glanced over at the table, they weren’t paying any attention to us. They were trying to engage Elise in conversation, trying to make her laugh.
All Gabe knew about Alabama was “Sweet Home Alabama,” a song that Elise and I hated because we’d had to hear it every day for our whole lives and we would continue hearing it unless we moved far away and never went back. “ ‘In Birmingham, they love the govna,’ ” he sang.
“Please stop.”
“That’s your state song,” he said. “You should have some state pride.”
“Like y’all have in Texas?” I said, throwing my arms around him.
“That’s right,” he said.
I was having a great time until I caught my sister’s eye, and then I was embarrassed. And then I was angry for being embarrassed, for always having to be the person she knew.
Elise and the other boys got into the pool with us. After less than a minute, Erik suggested we take off our tops and Gabe told him to go fuck himself and pointed out that I had on a one-piece and Charlie said I could take the whole thing off. Elise got out and put her dress on, lit another cigarette. They insisted they were kidding, only joking.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“You can go,” I said, wrapping my legs around Gabe’s waist. No wonder people liked to drink—you didn’t have to be who you were, you could change who you were. I ran my fingers through his wet, clumpy hair. There was a pimple on his neck and I made note of its location so I wouldn’t look at it again. “If I don’t get raptured, will you come for me?” I asked.
“What? Like if you’re left behind?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were agnostic,” he said.
“Exactly. I haven’t ruled anything out.”
“Well, it’s a lot to ask, but okay.”
“You promise?”
He placed his hand over his heart with a smack. “I’ll cross the Mojave.”
“What else?”
“I’ll ford the Mississippi,” he said. “And the Nile. The Nile, too.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I know, I’m pretty amazing.”
“Did you know that the Nile is the longest river in the world? It runs through ten African countries,” I said. These were the kind of useless facts I retained. Whenever I demonstrated my knowledge, I did it like this, without weaving it into the conversation at all. I pushed off of him and floated on my back, staring up at the huge cloud blocking the sun. The rays shot out in straight thick lines like a child’s drawing.
“Jess,” Elise said.
I swam over to the side and held on to the ladder. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. It was nearly dark and she was far enough away that I couldn’t differentiate her pupils from her irises.
“Do I need to go get Dad?” she said.
I swam back to Gabe, held onto him, and put my wet cheek against his.
“You better go,” he said.
“She won’t get my dad,” I said. “She’s just being a bitch.”
He whispered “room 212” in my ear and got out. I treaded water and read the POOL RULES. No cutoffs. No glass containers, food, or drinks. No smoking. No running. There were always so many rules, most of them unnecessary. I noticed a cricket and scooped it out. I looked around—there were a bunch of them. I scooped out another and another but they seemed to be multiplying, or else launching themselves right back in. I scooped out a fourth one and waited to see what it would do—it watched me watch it, still and patient.
I swam over to the ladder and climbed out.
On the way out, I said goodbye to Gabe, who was laughing and drinking with his friends as if he’d never met me.
Almost to our room, I hit my head on the low branch of a tree. The boys were still laughing—not at me, they hadn’t seen me—but I felt it in my throat, my chest. Boys would always laugh at me. They’d never want me.
Elise parted my hair to take a look. “You’re fine,” she said.
She opened the door, and we immediately peeled off our swimsuits and soaked them in the sink like our mother taught us. I put on a clean pair of panties and a tank top, left a pair of shorts on top of my bag. Elise sat on her bed and cleaned out her purse; it was full of trash: wrappers and receipts, a pebble she launched across the room.
“Do you want anything from the vending machine?” she asked.
“A Kit Kat,” I said, “And some Lay’s—no barbeque.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, closing the door behind her.
I drank a mug of water and then another. I’d be up all night peeing. I was always doing stuff that I immediately regretted. I checked my head in the mirror but couldn’t see anything. When I pressed, though, I could feel my pulse, a strange alien thing. Then I backed up until I had a view of my body. If I kept my legs slightly apart, there was a tiny triangle of light that peeked through. I wanted to starve myself until the space grew larger and larger, until I was the skinniest, most beautiful girl in the world.
Elise came back with two bags of Lay’s, a Kit Kat, and some Famous Amos cookies. We sat on her bed and ate everything, fast, and then I got in my own bed and watched her brush her hair. She could have been in a hair commercial, trying to convince me that Suave or some other cheap shampoo was responsible. I hated those commercials; there was no shampoo in the world that could make my hair look like that.
When she was finished, she picked up the remote and changed the channels until she came to a documentary on the Appalachian Trail, the camera panning over the mountains. It was over 2,100 miles long and went from Georgia all the way to Maine. From above, it looked treacherous, just a little path running over the mountains. We decided that one day we’d hike it together. We’d hike the entire thing, and we’d have trail names that started with “Moon” and “Rain,” like the girls in the documentary.
“I smoked too much,” Elise said. “My heart’s beating so fast.”
“You should stop smoking.”
“Maybe I will, but not for the baby.” She turned away from me and said, “I’m not going to ever be a mother. I’d be a terrible mother.”
“You’d be a good mother,” I said, but I didn’t know if she’d be a good mother or not. She liked to go to parties and drive around with her friends.
When Elise was asleep, I got out of bed and put on my shorts as quietly as possible, took a key off the table, and slipped out.
All of the lights were on and the curtains were open in room 212. I wanted to be a curtains-open kind of person, a person who smiled at strangers on the street—not just dogs and babies but beautiful people, too. Sometimes I could be this type of person. I’d feel so good and happy and it was like I’d never felt any other way, but the next day I’d be afraid again.
Charlie saw me and opened the door before I could knock.
Their room was exactly like ours except backward, the same dull landscape pictures on the wall.
“Hey, girl,” Gabe said. He scooted over and I sat next to him in bed. He handed me his beer.
“Your sister asleep?” Erik asked.
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t like us much,” Charlie said.
“Not really,” I said.
I knew it was coming and then Erik said she was a knockout and I agreed. My heart was beating fast. I moved a hand to my neck and tried to make it seem like I wasn’t checking my pulse.
The door opened and four people came in—three girls and a guy. Gabe stood and led me to the bathroom. “You aren’t going to like these people,” he said, locking us in. “The girls are loud and everybody gets so fucked up they puke and shit themselves.” He sat on the e
dge of the tub and I pressed my back to the door and slid down.
“They shit themselves?”
“Sometimes, but mostly they just puke.” He dropped the toilet lid and said it was our table. “We’ve got everything we need here—beer, a toilet, drinking water. I think we could be very happy.” He smiled. He was a lot better-looking when he didn’t smile but it was nice to be smiled at. And you couldn’t tell someone not to smile. It would be like saying, Don’t be happy. I don’t like it when you’re happy.
“I hit my head earlier. Do you see a bump?”
He lowered himself to the floor and parted my hair, searched my scalp. “I don’t see anything,” he said, putting his hands above my knees.
“I’m a good girl.”
His hand moved to my thigh. “I know.”
“I don’t even date.”
“That’s because you’re a fundamentalist,” he said, squeezing.
I thought about telling him I’d spent my whole life believing everything everyone had ever told me, but I didn’t want him to think I was stupid. And I was changing all of that—I was going to start becoming my own person, figuring out who I was and what I believed in.
“I like this t-shirt,” I said, rubbing the thin cotton between my fingers. It had a picture of Jeff Bridges on it.
“The muse of the age,” he said, examining the ring on my necklace. He slipped it on up to his knuckle.
“It’s a purity ring.”
“Your parents give it to you?”
“My dad. Elise and I both have them. We took pledges to stay virgins until marriage but they don’t work.”
“They don’t work, huh?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Elise is pregnant.”
“Shit,” he said. “Damn.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the problem didn’t feel like it belonged to me at all after that. It was just a story I could tell him. I told him about the ball where we’d pledged our virginity, how it was held in a school gymnasium, my father on one knee. All the white flowers and white balloons, grape juice for toasting.
“I didn’t know things like that existed,” he said.
“Some black family in the country organized it. They had four daughters. One of them was like seven.”
He touched my face and I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate—I had to enjoy it. I had to be fully in the moment so I could remember it forever. And then his hand was on my thigh again and my own hand moved instinctively to my other thigh, trying to feel what he felt. I put my face in his neck. He didn’t smell like soap or cologne or food or alcohol or cigarettes or plants. He didn’t smell like earth or salt or pickles or rain or honey or anything I could name. I wanted to be able to name it. How could I remember if I couldn’t name it?
“We just met but I feel like I know you,” I said. I’d always wanted to say that to someone. It wasn’t true but it wasn’t not true, either. There was something about him that I recognized.
“You’re easy to talk to,” he said, leaning forward. “And I like the way you look at me.”
“How do I look at you?”
“Like that,” he said.
“I’m sure lots of girls look at you like this,” I said. I was attempting to look sexy by copying what I’d seen on TV—a combination of sleepy and hungry. He leaned forward and I turned my head. I wasn’t ready for him to kiss me yet. “What are y’all doing in a motel room if you live here?” I asked.
He reached behind him and turned on the shower. “We just stay here sometimes.”
“How come?”
“Because we can do whatever we want and no one bothers us.”
“Do you tell your mom you’re spending the night with Erik and Erik tells his mom he’s spending the night with you or something?” I asked.
“My mom doesn’t care. If she wants to find me, she’ll call, but she usually doesn’t. I’m trying to create some ambiance,” he said. “What do you think? Is it putting you in the mood?”
“It sounds like a shower,” I said.
“We could take one together.”
“I don’t think so.”
Outside, more people were arriving. There were many different voices now, but one loud girl stood out. We drank our beers and listened; I liked being hidden away with him, separate from the others. “How old are you?” I asked.
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“Fifteen. Elise is seventeen.”
“You seem older,” he said, staring into my eyes.
I gathered my courage and held his gaze. It felt incredible. There were starbursts in the center of his eyes, little rods of yellow and green shooting out from the pupil like a doll’s. But then there was a knock—it was the loud girl, saying his name.
“We’re busy,” Gabe said.
“I gotta take a piss,” a guy said.
“Me too,” said the girl.
“Piss outside.”
“Fuck you, dude,” the guy said.
“I can’t piss outside,” said the girl, and we sat there quietly until they went away.
“There’s not much privacy here,” he said, touching my hair.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” I said.
“I know,” he said but his face changed briefly, like he hadn’t known. He ducked out of the bathroom and grabbed a couple of beers from the sink, shut and locked the door behind him.
“I like you,” I said when he was settled back onto the floor. “Why do you have to be all the way out in West Texas?”
“I like it out in West Texas,” he said. “But then I’ve never really been anywhere else. What’s Alabama like?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “it’s different. The birds sound different. It’s full of deer and paper mills and fat people. That makes it sound really bad, though—Montgomery’s not that bad—I just wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Alabama. Except maybe Birmingham. Birmingham’s okay, I guess.”
“Are there Rebel Flags everywhere?”
“Sometimes, but it’s good ’cause then you know who to avoid.”
There was another knock and a different girl’s voice—she sounded nice, said please. He stood and pulled me up.
“All right,” he said. “Fuck.”
“Thanks,” the girl said. She was a pretty, bleached blonde with big brown eyes.
Three people were playing quarters at the table while Erik and a girl watched the muted TV. Outside, a group of people stood around, smoking cigarettes and talking.
“Hey,” a guy said.
“I’m Jess,” I said, sticking out my hand. He shook it, said it was nice to meet me. Gabe introduced me to the others. They were all attractive but still had one or two things wrong with them: acne, thick legs, kinky hair, moles that needed to be removed, hook noses, gums that showed too much when they smiled, eyes that were too far apart or close together. I didn’t have to be perfect—hardly anyone was perfect. Why did I think I had to be perfect all the time? And all of these people were having sex. I looked around and thought, You’re having sex, and you, and you.
Gabe said he had to get up at five and I wondered if I was boring him, or if there was some other girl that he wanted. Maybe the pretty, bleached blonde.
“Why do you have to get up so early?”
“I work construction with my dad,” he said. “I’ll probably sleep in my van for a few hours.”
“It’s still early,” I said, though I didn’t know what time it was—eleven o’clock, maybe later. I didn’t want to go back to my room—there was nothing to do there but go to sleep and I didn’t want to sleep. For once in my life, I felt like I was living and I wanted to stretch it out as long as I could.
“You could come with me,” he said. “There’s a bed in the back.”
“You have a bed in your van?”
“It’s my dad’s van.”
“That’s kind of weird.”
“But convenient,” he said. “Wait here.” He wen
t back inside and grabbed a couple of beers, put a can in each pocket. Then we walked down the stairs and across the parking lot.
He opened the passenger-side door and I climbed in. It smelled like gasoline. I ducked into the back and sat on a mattress covered with a burnt-orange blanket. It was quiet for the few moments it took him to walk around and unlock his door, and I wondered what I was doing. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, but this was the kind of situation I had always been taught to avoid. It was risky behavior, how bad things happened. I thought of Acts 18:10: “For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” I loved that—“I have many people in this city.” The Bible could be so beautiful sometimes, if you could forget it was the Bible.
“It smells like gas,” I said.
“I’ll crack a window.” He let the windows down halfway, and then he sat next to me and opened the beers.
“Is the van going to explode?”
“No,” he said, laughing.
I told him I’d never done anything like this before, that I’d only kissed one boy in my life. I wanted him to know I wasn’t the type to go off with a boy I’d just met even though it was exactly what I was doing and nothing I could say would change that. He stopped me by kissing me. His hands started to wander—they went under my shirt, the waistband of my shorts—and we started kissing more and more aggressively, and then I felt like I was with a stranger.
“Hold on,” I said, pushing him back.
“What?”
“I want to see you.” His pupils were larger now, and he seemed different, changed. “I can’t see you,” I said.
“Do you want me to turn on the light?”
“No—yes.”
He stood and turned the light on, sat back down.
“Is that better?” he asked.
“Yes.” He was the most perfect boy I’d ever seen. He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and I took a long drink, finishing the can. I could feel the alcohol coursing through my veins and it felt good. It felt so good I thought about all of the beers I’d refused, all of the beers poured down the drain, behind bushes. I wanted them back. He touched my hair again and said it was soft and I set the can between my legs and leaned forward to kiss him. His hands stayed on my knees, my waist, places I wouldn’t push them off.