Sister Golden Hair: A Novel

by Darcey Steinke

  After the bread was gone, we walked down to Kroger. Jill told me she’d seen a hippie the day before pulling food out of the Dumpster. We went around the back and Jill, holding her nose, climbed inside. Standing on a raft of old cabbages, she passed me expired cans of turkey gravy and TV dinners. She found a bag of apples too rotten to eat but perfectly good for applesauce and several loaves of stale bread. Jill speculated that if the plentitude of the Dumpster held out, they’d be set for food at least through winter. In the spring she could forage for wild turnips and wood sorrel up the mountain and plant tomatoes and zucchini like Mr. Ananais did on the sunny side of the duplex. Every few days, I helped Jill scavenge in the Dumpster for what she called “Dumpster delicacies,” which made up the Bamburgs’ odd menu. Smoked oysters and week-old cupcakes, tuna fish and crushed pineapple, cornflakes soaked with tomato juice. Her plan appeared foolproof until Beth ate out of a dented can of beef hash and spent the rest of the night hugging the toilet.

  After that I snuck over a pound of frozen hamburger in white butcher paper. Our freezer was full of the stuff, and I knew my mom wouldn’t notice. But Jill and I both knew I couldn’t keep doing this. We lay across Jill’s bed, the sides of our heads touching and our bare toes looking so similar we could be a new creature with four feet. Since she wasn’t wearing her back brace, Jill had started to hunch, and her face was pale and ominous even in broad daylight. We were trying to figure out how she could get money. The rent was due soon, and while Mr. Ananais would let it slide for a week or two, soon things would get desperate.

  “I could make pot holders and sell them door to door,” Jill said. “But each one takes an hour to make.”

  “All that work and you only get a quarter for them!”

  “I could babysit more.”

  I was quiet. It was unclear how Sheila had cornered the market. I’d seen her going in and out of nearly every duplex with children. Nobody wanted Jill and me anymore because Sheila looked so much more like a girl should, with her long shiny hair and baby-blue ski jacket. Even Sandy, who was taking nursing classes at night, used Sheila now instead of us.

  “We could have a bake sale!” I suggested.

  “How will we get the money for flour and eggs?” Jill said.

  “We could shovel snow.”

  “Oh please,” Jill said. “The snow never lasts more than half a day around here.”

  I hadn’t known that, though I should have guessed. It was already mid-November and still warm. Heat came off Jill’s body and I could feel her anxiety, as if jolts of electricity were making it impossible for her to relax. I took her hand and squeezed her fingers. We both looked up at the ceiling, and I saw some black spots, dead bugs in the glass shade.

  “We could blackmail somebody,” I said. “Find out who’s cheating on their wife or husband, then write a letter saying if they don’t send us a hundred dollars we’ll tell all about it.”

  Jill sat up.

  “That would be really low-down,” she said. “I hope we don’t have to do anything like that.”

  “I’m saying if it does come to that, I’d do it if you wanted me to,” I said. “I’d even break into somebody’s house if you asked.”

  “Now you’re just talking,” Jill said.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve thought all about it.”

  It was true. Lying in my bed in the dark, I’d sworn myself to my friend. I would do anything, even kill somebody, if she wanted me to.

  After school the next day, we walked through the subdivisions toward the strip mall. Jill had decided to get a job, and she’d made a list of businesses along the highway. In front of a brick ranch home, a man raked and Jill watched kids jump and roll in the piles of leaves. She had a weak spot for family scenes: kids in bathing suits dashing through sprinklers, families eating dinner together. Even our Halloween party had been an attempt at a wholesome life. I tried to distract her by asking questions for her job interview.

  “Who is your model in life?”

  “Cher!”

  I thought of trying to get her to say somebody like Rosa Parks or Madame Curie. But Jill was honest, and those other ladies didn’t have a chance compared to Cher in her roller skates, multicolored kneesocks, and white leotard rolling along the sidewalk in Venice Beach.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  Even as I said it I realized it was a mistake. Jill would start up on how God hated her family so much he’d put a curse on them.

  She looked at me. To hide the circles under her eyes she’d used her mother’s white cover stick.

  “Do you really think anybody would ask me that?”

  “They might.”

  Her features came apart a little and I thought she might cry, but instead she laughed and I followed her across the highway, where we waited on the median, cars rushing by on either side.

  “Do you think I look all right?” Jill asked. She had to yell above the sound of the engines.

  She wore her mother’s trench coat with a floral scarf around her neck that made her look like a grandma.

  “You look great,” I yelled back. “They’d be crazy not to hire you.”

  We walked up into the Hop-In parking lot, first on Jill’s list of possible job locations. The plate-glass window advertised two-for-the-price-of-one corn dogs and cheap gallons of RC Cola. Jill pushed her shoulders back; the ridges of her spine stuck up out of the coat material like beads on a chain.

  I followed her into the store, past the rack of magazines that included Playboy and Mechanics Today and the long row of candy bars and chewing tobacco. Shiny hot dogs rolled in their metal ridges beside the slushie machine. The manager was bent over, getting napkins from underneath the counter. We’d spent time here, playing pinball and watching the manager’s girlfriend, a fierce ginger-haired woman, drink free slushies one after another until her tongue was blue. As he turned toward us, we saw one of his eyes was swollen shut.

  “What can I help you ladies with today?”

  “Are you hiring?” Jill asked.

  He smiled.

  “You got to be eighteen to sell beer.”

  “But I guess you don’t have to be eighteen to buy it,” Jill said.

  Everybody knew the manager never checked anybody’s ID. Kids on the school bus said he once sold a six-pack to a nine-year-old. It was a bold preemptive move for Jill to mention that. She must have been thinking of my idea of blackmailing someone.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

  “What’s what supposed to mean?” Jill mimicked.

  The manager squinted at Jill.

  “What about custodial work?” she said. “I could take out the trash and clean the bathrooms.”

  He studied Jill the way a cattle farmer might study a cow, looking over her narrow shoulders, her hunched back and arms like pipe cleaners.

  “I’m a lot stronger than I look,” Jill said. “Once I picked up a cement block and there was another time—”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Come back when you’re older.”

  Outside Jill hit herself in the head with her fist.

  “Did you hear me in there?” she said. “My mouth just went on by itself.”

  We stood by the side of the parking lot, next to a stand of sumac trees. Drops of rain ticked on the asphalt and sprang off the parked cars. My legs inside my jeans were freezing and my teeth chattered. Jill wanted to go in again, but I convinced her it was hopeless. I followed her to the two other places on her list, the pizza place and the grocery store where she’d hoped to be a bag girl. Neither were hiring.

  We walked under a low haze of clouds back toward Bent Tree. We passed picture windows where we could see people sitting very still, staring at TV screens. Water gathered at the edge of Jill’s jawbone and dropped down to darken the beige material of her mother’s overcoat. The light was pink behind the gray branches.

  In an effort to cheer her up I pointed to a ceramic lawn donkey, his wagon filled with blue plastic roses.<
br />
  “How adorable,” she said at first, looking at it blankly. Then her eyes widened. She ran down into the ditch by the side of the road.

  “Look at me!” she said. “I’m the troll that lives under the bridge!”

  She ran back beside me and stuck her arms straight out in front of her like a zombie, walking with her eyes closed over the asphalt. The rest of the way she did crazy stuff like opening people’s mailboxes and yelling “Is anybody home?” Jill was acting like one of my dad’s patients. She taunted a beagle tied up to a front porch and jumped on a Big Wheel that sat abandoned in a driveway.

  As soon as we got back to her unit she ran to the record player and put “Indian Reservation” by the Raiders on the turntable. She made Beth turn the overhead light on and off like a strobe.

  I jumped up and threw myself against the floor and Jill fell down against me, bumping into my ribs. Inside our skin our bones were sturdy as fat branches; we had weight. With the lights off Jill sprang up again and screamed.

  I felt sweat coming up under my clothes and a wildness take hold of me, a craziness that I hadn’t felt for years. Once again I could almost believe I was wrestling a wolverine or a hungry little meerkat.

  Beth said her arm was getting tired, so she left the lights off, but we still jumped, throwing ourselves down, then jumping up again.

  Jill punched her fist in the air and threw herself at the television, knocking it off the stand. The picture collapsed in on itself and the screen went blank. Before she’d been smiling, ecstatic, but now I just saw her white teeth in the dark.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now?” she said, jumping on top of me and speaking directly into my ear. “Now it’s time to get serious.”

  She’d read an article in the Roanoke World-News about the massage parlors on Williamson Road. One lady who worked at Petticoat Junction claimed all she did was tickle men with a peacock feather, and occasionally she gave an older man with poor circulation a foot massage. A lady who worked at the Smile Lounge testified that she gave her clients manicures using clear nail polish and if they asked, she would trim their mustaches. The article also mentioned that a massage parlor worker made ten times more than a waitress.

  “How hard can it be?” Jill said.

  I was skeptical. When I asked about the massage parlors my father blushed and changed the subject, but my mother warned me prostitutes worked at those places, that they did disgusting things with men for money. I was pretty sure tickling a man with a feather didn’t count as disgusting, but I wasn’t really sure. I knew sex was disgusting, hard kissing was disgusting, even just pressing your private parts together was disgusting. But the massage parlors, according to the women who worked there, were not about prostitution. Instead men sat on the edge of the bed, just talking with the women or watching them fold laundry or file their nails. Sometimes there were special requests and the women would jump rope or talk about their favorite childhood pets. Jill brought up the girls in Playboy. These girls fascinated and bewildered us because on the one hand they spread out completely naked on fur blankets, but then in the interviews where they listed their hobbies, they wrote that they loved to play basketball or ride bikes.

  “Just imagine,” Jill said. “With all that money I can buy a beautiful pink ham!”

  She also wanted to save up so we could all fly to Disney World and stay at a motel that had a pool and a shuffleboard court.

  We took the bus down Williamson Road, past the Vagabond Motor Lodge to the Lee Theater. The movie titles, Girls That Do and The Divorcee, were spelled out in red and black letters with big red triple X’s beside them. Next door was a place with blackened windows and a sign that read TODAY’S ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. Music rattled the front door. We stood across the street by the guardrail in our ski jackets. It was so cold that the tips of Jill’s ears were red and my nose ran.

  Petticoat Junction was a brick ranch house with purple shutters and a large American flag flying from the pole out front. The windows of Miss Renee’s Health Club had been cemented over. Jill took my hand and squeezed it hard, then tried to straighten her back. She had lost weight; the bones in her face pressed out, making her features shine. When there was a gap in the traffic we ran across the highway and walked down the driveway to the side door. We stepped over a puddle of muddy water. I tapped my foot in a tight triangular pattern as Jill pushed the buzzer and we waited.

  There was noise behind the door and as it opened a man appeared in a waft of warm air scented with sandalwood incense. He wore a bright-red shirt and had dark curly hair. Around one wrist was a leather band and drawn on the knuckles of the other hand were blue tattoos.

  “I need a job,” Jill said.

  “You got the wrong place,” he said.

  We watched his Adam’s apple go up and down.

  “I can use a feather better than anybody,” Jill said. She reached into her Mexican bag and pulled out a turkey feather she’d found in the woods.

  “See,” she said, “I even have my own!”

  “Little girls,” he said, waving his hand. “Go away.”

  Jill threw her body against the door.

  “If I could just talk to you inside!”

  “No!” he said.

  “Just let me in!”

  “Crazy bitches,” he said, slamming the door and throwing the lock.

  Between the massage parlors was a Citgo and we walked over and stood by the gas pumps under a string of red, white, and blue flags. Jill was wearing her mother’s macramé skirt with a safety pin clenching the waist and suede boots with paper stuck up into the toes. She unzipped her ski vest with the rainbow on the back, took a pair of balled-up tube socks from her bag, and stuffed a sock into each of the cups of her bra, tying up her blouse so her belly button showed.

  “What are you doing that for?” I asked.

  “You know why,” she said.

  “Let’s go back.”

  She looked at me with a sudden softness in her face.

  “I can’t go back,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You know why,” she said again and walked away from me toward Petticoat Junction.

  I ran after her on the wet asphalt. She knocked on the door and a tall woman in a blonde wig answered. Behind her sat three women, their eyes all outlined in black. Each one wore a different neon-colored baby-doll nightgown with feathers at the hem. One used a mirror to put on lipstick while the other two read magazines.

  “Your mother is not here,” the woman said. “I already told you on the phone.”

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else. I’m not looking for my mother,” Jill said, then paused. “Well, I guess I am looking for my mother, but not here.”

  The woman’s brows had been plucked and drawn back in so they formed a semicircle high above each eye.

  “I’m a good dancer,” Jill said, thrusting out her hips. “If you let me in I could show you.”

  “Your mother is not here,” the woman said, as if she were deaf and hadn’t heard anything Jill said.

  Jill pulled her feather out of the bag again.

  “I have a feather,” she said, throwing herself toward the woman, “and I’m not afraid to use it!”

  The woman’s mouth dropped open and she slammed the door.

  “Let me in!” Jill shouted. “You didn’t even give me a chance to show you my splits.”

  When I got home my mother was sitting in her bathrobe watching television. I couldn’t be certain, but by the way she was sitting I guessed my parents had had a fight and my father had taken the car out for a drive again. She was at 3 but in danger of slipping to 2. She didn’t turn her head when I came into the room, and I saw she was watching her favorite show, Mary Tyler Moore.

  While my mom usually talked continuously about how important it was for women to stay home and make the domestic sphere beautiful, to be loving wives and attentive mothers, how my grandmother had wanted her to be the valued helpmate of a rich and cons
iderate man, there she was sitting on the edge of the couch in complete thrall to Mary Richards, a working girl. I could tell by the way she didn’t acknowledge my presence that a silent treatment was in effect. I knew I should just go to my bedroom and read one of my library books about teenagers dying of leukemia, but instead I tried to figure out what had triggered it. If she’d found out I’d been to Williamson Road she’d be furious, but there was no way for her to know about that. I remembered I had laughed at dinner when my father told the story of the patient who thought he was a telephone pole and I’d yelled at Phillip for stealing Tater Tots off my plate. I didn’t think either of those would have set her off. The most likely reason for the silent treatment was that I’d been home so little lately. I thought of telling her I planned to stay home more. I wanted to say how her hair looked pretty pulled back with the pink scarf and that she was the most beautiful mother in all of Virginia.

  But I knew neither of these things would work. I always pretended that I was unaffected by my mother’s silent treatments, but actually they made me feel like the ground underneath me had lost its solidity and I was swaying inside the terrible dark.

  The silent treatment lasted days, even though I jumped up after dinner to load the dishwasher and complimented my mom on everything from the way she sat sideways on the couch to how she organized the spice rack. Still she walked right past me as if I were invisible. Even when I got desperate and pretended to have a temperature, she put her hand on my forehead, shook her head, and let her fingers drift off, all without making eye contact.