Sister Golden Hair: A Novel

by Darcey Steinke

  “There’s Naomi,” Larry said, pointing to a girl with long, dark hair wearing a white shirt with a giant scallop shell on it and a blue skirt.

  “You went out with her?”

  Larry nodded.

  “Three years. Then that asshole Willmont Vanhoff is with her two weeks and gets her pregnant. He was a loudmouth about it too. He might as well have put flyers under every windshield wiper at the mall.”

  “That’s sick,” Dwayne said.

  “Hey Naomi,” Larry called to her and her friend. Her friend was short with broad shoulders, while Naomi was tall and skinny, with a gap between her front teeth and bangs cut straight across her forehead.

  “Larry,” she said, walking over to us. “I heard you were back.”

  “I want you to know it was bogus,” he said. “They dropped the charges.”

  “You’ll go back in the fall?”

  “My only plan is to party all summer long.”

  Naomi laughed.

  “Same old Larry.”

  “No, not same old Larry. Different Larry. New-and-improved Larry.”

  “Yeah right,” she said.

  “Seriously,” he said. “You all need a ride?”

  “No,” she said, “I’m spending the night with Josie. Her mom is on her way to get us.”

  “Sluts,” Larry said, as soon as we pulled out of the lot. “That little one fucked Buddy Eclor while his friend watched.”

  I knew Larry was lying. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Even features, his Star of David necklace illuminated in the oncoming headlights. I saw his cheek move as he clicked his jaw. He rolled his window down all the way and leaned out so the wind was full in his face. As we drove on 419 past the mall, the electric sign flashed over a huge and empty lot: GO GET ’EM KNIGHTS. The windowless mall looked like a space station and the asphalt like the domesticated surface of the moon. I wanted to break the tension in the car, worse even than the force field of static at my own house—but how? I could say something about Cher, how long it must take to sew the beads on one of her fantastic outfits. Sometimes to go to sleep at night, instead of counting sheep, I’d imagine a pair of hands sewing one small bead after another; sometimes I even thought of them as tears threaded into a tapestry of water. But that sounded, even to my mind, girly and ridiculous. Maybe they’d be interested in my dad’s dream theories. He’d just told me that fluxes in the earth’s magnetic fields made dreams more bizarre.

  Dwayne turned on the radio and Skynyrd came blaring out of the dashboard speakers. Larry pushed the gas pedal and we zoomed by the mechanic’s shop with the giant tire out front, a strip mall with a pet supply and an ABC store, past the beauty parlor in the trailer, and into a stretch of woods. Headlights showed leaves, gray trunks of trees, fern fronds, a stump turned over, red with mud. Sheila told me she’d been to a bonfire at the dump where boys drank moonshine and one girl got so drunk she took her shirt off and danced around the fire.

  I knew Dwayne might try to kiss me or even zipless fuck me. Parking, like babysitting, was dangerous. Everyone knew about the couple who heard a strange scraping sound. They raced away only to discover a hook dangling from their door handle, left by a one-handed mental patient escaped from the local loony bin. Those two got off easy, though, compared to the boy who went out in the woods to pee. His girlfriend waited all night for him to come back, but it wasn’t until sunrise that she got out of the car and saw her boyfriend’s head stuck onto the radio antenna!

  We pulled onto a dirt road and drove, cones of headlights on a swath of kudzu vine that smothered the underbrush and reached up into the trees. Light illuminated two boys in army jackets, one holding what I knew was a roach clip; then they fell back into the dark. We drove into an opening where the trees had been cleared and I could see the stars overhead; a few cars were parked and kids sat up on the trunks. Inside the tree line was a bonfire, and I saw kids’ faces illuminated in slashes of orange and red.

  We pulled into the far end of the opening and parked. The air smelled of wood smoke and sweet rot. I’d heard about the dump as a place where girls lost their virginity and boys puked and passed out. The blanket beside me had taken on scary implications. I was worried Dwayne and Larry were going to make me walk into the woods.

  I heard the door click open and Larry got out and walked away from the car. I heard his zipper and the flat sound of urine hitting the ground.

  Dwayne turned around.

  “Want to get out?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “I could come back there.”

  “Let’s get out,” I said, pushing the handle down and stepping out onto the ground.

  We sat on the trunk. Dwayne passed me a beer. They were warm now and tasted terrible. Larry came back, leaned against the trunk, and bent forward to the flame of his lighter, his profile illuminated and then gone.

  “How are the lovebirds?”

  “Better than you,” Dwayne said.

  “Shit, man,” Larry said, “I don’t know why I’m hanging around you preschoolers.”

  “Maybe because you don’t have any other friends.”

  “You better shut your mouth,” Larry said, “if you want to keep your job.”

  “Did you know that elephants cry when they’re lonely?” It was something Kira had told me and it just came down from my mind and blew out of my mouth like a soap bubble.

  “Is that so?” Larry said.

  “Leave her,” Dwayne said.

  “What do elephants do after they fuck?”

  “I’ll tell you what they don’t do,” Dwayne said. “They don’t hold a gun to a girl’s head.”

  “It was a joke,” Larry said. “Can’t anyone take a joke?”

  Light shimmered back in the woods toward the highway, first dim and then brighter as a car drove into the opening and pulled up near us. The Volvo doors opened and boys in Izod shirts, madras shorts, and docksiders got out. One was holding a bottle of bourbon and the others silver Jefferson cups.

  “It’s Willmont,” Larry said, motioning with his head to a kid wearing a blue button-down and a puka bead necklace.

  “Be cool,” Dwayne said.

  “You know me, I’m Mr. Cool,” Larry said, though he stood straight now and glanced with undisguised hostility at the boys.

  “I mean it!” Dwayne said.

  “Fucking preppies,” Larry said.

  “Dirtbags,” Willmont said, and all the boys laughed.

  “You going to stand for that?” Larry said, holding his arms out.

  “Be cool,” Dwayne said. “Don’t let them get to you.”

  A lit cigarette flew from the group toward us like a tiny shooting star, landed with a spray of red embers on the back window of Larry’s car, and rolled down the trunk onto the ground.

  “Don’t.” Dwayne tried to hold Larry back but it was too late; he flew like a fly out of an open car window, swung his arm back, and punched Willmont in the head. There was a sound like a bag of flour falling off a table and hitting the floor and then voices rose one over another, like birds squalling. Larry pulled his shirt over his head; his stomach was pale, muscular, and shiny with sweat.

  “Come on,” he said. “Hit me, pussy.”

  “Get in and lock the doors,” Dwayne ordered.

  I got inside, rolled up all the windows, and locked the doors. Out the back I watched kids from the other side of the dump run toward us. At first I thought they were going to try to help, but then I saw their faces and how several screamed out “Fight!”

  Dwayne tried to pull Larry back, but he kept slipping out of Dwayne’s embrace.

  Willmont stood, one hand on his hip and the other touching his bloody lip.

  “You fucker,” Willmont said. “You’re crazy.”

  “Come on,” Larry said. “I’ll show you how crazy I am.”

  Larry reached out and grabbed Willmont’s necklace, and the string snapped and beads flew up and then down, landing on the ground like hail.
r />   Willmont threw himself at Larry, and when Dwayne tried to pull Larry back two preppy guys started to hit him. He tried to twist out of their reach, but one boy punched him in the stomach and he doubled over, and the other hit him in the side of the head. He fell forward, but maintained his balance until a third guy kicked him from behind and he fell, his head in a rut of rainwater.

  When I got home that night everyone was already sleeping. Upstairs I saw something in the mirror at the end of the hallway. I moved my head sideways and the head of the intruder also shifted. I raised my right. Ditto. I walked forward and looked into my own dark face. I turned and went to the bottom of the stairs and then walked toward the figure. I did this too many times to count, sometimes walking very fast, sometimes in slow motion, pressing my body into the wall, other times with my head pressed into the top of the other’s head, as if we were conjoined twins. Finally I heard mattress springs shift inside my parents’ bedroom.

  “Stop whatever it is you’re doing,” my father said, “and get to bed.”

  I had to lie to my mom again to get her to drive me to Tanglewood. I said I had a job interview at the Orange Julius. Once up the escalator, I walked under the archway into the French Quarter. The French Quarter was looking shabby. Some of the stores, I read in the paper, were complaining about being stuck away in the corner of the gigantic mall. And there was a terrible rumor that the dark streets would be torn down, replaced by a giant sporting-goods center. I still loved the arches painted to look like brick and the lanterns suspended on the stucco walls. It was always a clear and starry night in the Quarter.

  The Hancock’s window featured loafers on pedestals. The place was wood-paneled with racks of sports coats and windbreakers. Dwayne stood next to a table covered with cashmere sweaters. His right eye was purple and there was a scab on his bottom lip.

  “You came!” he said.

  “I said I would.”

  He introduced me to the other salesman, a chubby guy who was folding shirts by the cash register, and then to the floor mannequin, Mr. Potato Head, with his bow tie and seersucker suit. He led me through a back door and up a few stairs into the attic stockroom. The night before, after Larry had dropped us off, I’d cleaned up Dwayne’s face with a washcloth and listened to him fret about getting scars that would make him look less like Hutch. His father was at the bar and so he’d played me his Allman Brothers record and told me how he was planning to quit high school, get his GED, and move to Los Angeles.

  The attic stockroom with its sloped ceiling and rough wood floors was the place Jill and I had envisioned renting in the French Quarter, a cozy apartment with a view out the tiny beveled window of a dark European street. Dwayne led me to a little table where he had set out sandwiches and cans of soda.

  “Thanks about last night,” he said.

  “No problem,” I said.

  I took small bites of my sandwich so I wouldn’t get mayo on my chin.

  In bed the night before, I had fought with myself. Larry was at worst an agent of evil and at best a lunatic. Dwayne was trying to do better, but he was clueless and pathetic. Also I was lonely; my brother had no interest in me, my mom was giving me yet another silent treatment, and my dad was preoccupied as usual. And then there was summer itself; my job babysitting Phillip and Eddie was so dull and repetitive, I thought I might kill myself. Dwayne was just my momentary escape hatch. But I knew I was lying to myself. Because if Dwayne loved me, I’d be a girl loved by a boy. Once this happened, everyone else would realize I was adorable and loveable too. My eyes would shine, I’d look delicate—even delectable—and whether there was a place for me on earth or not would no longer be in dispute. I wanted my own story to get going. Not my mother’s story or my father’s story, not Sandy’s story, or Jill’s, or Sheila’s, but mine.

  “Did you know a snail can sleep for three years?”

  Dwayne smiled, moved my hair off my face, used his hand to cup my cheek, and pulled my mouth closer to his. I could smell the cold cuts on his breath and then his mouth was on mine, his hurt lip rough; his tongue darted between my teeth and moved fervently against my gums.

  The next day, after feeding Eddie and Phillip a late lunch, I was just settling down to watch the soaps when I heard a shot explode from in front of the house. I ran outside. Eddie had a shiny piece of coat lining tied around his neck and Phillip was wearing his new glasses. Both wore black felt minutemen hats. Their bikes lay on the gravel beside them as they squatted down, marveling at the hole in the ground and the ants streaming over the red dirt.

  “That’s cruel!” I said.

  “They’re ants,” Eddie said, as if I didn’t know. “They’d bite you as soon as look at you.”

  “Where’d you get the firecracker?”

  “What firecracker?”

  “Come off it,” I said.

  “Dwayne gave it to us.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “It was weird,” Phillip said. “He just walked up the hill and handed it to me.”

  I walked down the mountain toward Dwayne’s duplex. Mrs. Smith had unrolled a Confederate flag from her second-story window and several people were setting up grills in the front yard to celebrate. Most of Bent Tree was at the stadium downtown for the parade. Mr. Ananais had gone to see the antique car show and the wrestlers Bobo John and Billy the Red.

  At Dwayne’s the blinds were closed, but I could see the TV was on and I heard muffled voices. I’d come down to tell him how disappointed I was that he’d give something so dangerous to kids. But I had a deeper reason. I had decided to let Dwayne do whatever he wanted to me. He could even kidnap me or rape me if he wanted. He could handcuff me and tickle me with a feather, or give me an Indian handshake. I tapped a triangular pattern six times with each foot; my toes in my flip-flops looked long and odd as if they were giving me away as a space alien. I heard a sharp laugh and the door sucked open. Dwayne stood in his khakis, his oxford open to show his bare chest, his eyelids sunk down halfway.

  A sweet smell wafted out on a wave of cold air conditioning.

  “Come on in,” he said. “It’s the fucking Bi-cen-tenn-ial.”

  I stepped inside and looked around the dark room. Larry and Sheila sat on the couch and Dwayne’s dad sat in a lawn chair up close to the television, which was balanced on a box. Sheila glared at me. I knew she thought I’d ratted out Mr. Ramin.

  “Close the fucking door,” she said. “You’re letting all the cold air out.”

  “Watch your language, missy,” Dwayne’s dad said, though he did not turn around, just sat in his bathrobe with a glass of scotch in his hand, watching the television screen.

  “Come on, Dwayne Senior,” Larry said. “Loosen up.”

  “Yeah,” Sheila said, “loosen up!”

  Dwayne tossed me a can of Bud and I sat down on the shag with my back against the wall. I realized I had played right into his hands. He knew I’d come down if he gave my brother the firecracker.

  “Tell her what you did to Willmont,” Sheila said.

  “I caught him coming out of the 7-Eleven,” Larry said, “and beat the shit out of him.”

  “Can you keep it down,” Dwayne Senior said. “I can’t hear the president.”

  One part of me was saying: Get out. Get out now while you can. I was also worried about my little brother and Eddie, whom I was supposed to be watching. But another part of me was fascinated with the white-blond hair on Dwayne’s forearm, by his sad crooked smile and his drunken dad.

  I’d read how boys asked you out, bought you dinner, and kissed you at the door when they drove you home. I’d read about dances, where you drank punch from crystal bowls and danced with a different boy every song. But this particular social situation—sitting around drinking beers while your date’s dad sat in a stupor watching television—I didn’t have any information on.

  “Did you see the nigger moving into 21A?” Dwayne’s dad asked.

  I had seen the van pull up and a white man and his black wife carr
y boxes into the house. There was a little girl who ran around the yard trying to catch butterflies. My father had walked over to welcome them.

  “Come on, Dad,” Dwayne said.

  “I got fired because of a nigger.”

  “You got fired,” Dwayne said, “because you were out a whole week and didn’t call in once.”

  “I was sick,” Dwayne’s dad said. “You know I was sick. They would have let me off but that nigger salesman told them he’d seen me down at the bar.”

  “But you were at the bar,” Dwayne said.

  “All I’d done was gone down to get a hot toddy for my throat.”

  Everyone was quiet. When you were with boys you let the boys talk and you just laughed a lot. If you did say something, it had to be adorable. You could say something funny, but dumb-funny was better than smart-funny. I thought of cutting the silence by making a joke about the movie Jaws or saying something about the Apollo spaceship that had just splashed down, the pale astronauts coming out only to go into isolation to make sure they didn’t have some crazy space virus.

  Dwayne’s dad stomped upstairs, changed his clothes, and went out, he said, for cigarettes. We all knew it was 6:00 PM, his time to go to the bar in the strip mall next to the card shop.

  “We could go downtown,” I said, “and see the fireworks.”

  “Fuck that,” Larry said. “It’s showtime!”

  He closed the blinds and got the movie projector from the closet and took a reel from a paper bag. Idiotically, as it turned out, I first thought he’d show us a documentary about the Revolutionary War. The light flicked on against the stucco wall: an Asian girl in bell-bottoms and a red halter top pushed a cart through a grocery store. The film quality was grainy and I could hear the film moving inside the machine. The girl stopped in front of the bananas and made eye contact with a bald guy in a white T-shirt. The man and woman left the grocery store. Then they were in an apartment and the man unzipped his pants. The girl licked her lips slowly and dramatically and then they fell on each other in a frenzy of body parts and extended tongues.