“You aren’t inhaling,” he told her.
“I’m trying!”
“No, you’re breathing through your nose and taking it into your mouth. Here.” He walked behind her and held the can to her lips with one hand and held her nose shut with the other. “Breathe,” he told her. “Now hold it.”
Girl’s eyes were running when he released her, but the smoke soothed all the sad and scared feelings that lived inside her chest. She felt giggles rising like bubbles, but pushed them down. She wasn’t going to look stupid. The giggling feeling went down between her legs, and she kissed Danny, even though his nose was too big and he was too skinny. She had finally found something to make all the sadness go away.
thanksgiving with father
Girl unlocked her apartment door at noon. Jenna, her favorite of her new friends, was moving to Seattle, so she had a sleepover party on her last night in town and invited Girl. It was her first sleepover since she left New York.
“I want you to meet my best friend, Suzy,” Jenna had said. “Now that I am moving, you two will be best friends.” The sleepover was Jenna’s way of introducing the two, and both girls accepted that they would become best friends like Jenna said. They had stayed up all night talking. The girls slept till eleven, which was pretty early to wake up at a sleepover, in Girl’s opinion, but it was Thanksgiving. At Mother and Stepmother’s house, they watched the parade in the morning, then ate dinner in the midafternoon. She would be home with plenty of time to spare.
“Father?” Girl called as she walked into the apartment. He wasn’t there—but had left a note.
“I called all twenty names on your phone list, and no one knows where you are. I went to the potluck dinner at church without you. You are grounded off the phone for two weeks, and you have to write a two-page essay on acceptable behavior,” he had written on a yellow pad of paper. Girl went to pick up the phone to call her brother in outrage, but it was gone. Father had taken it with him. She couldn’t talk to her mom, even. Her first holiday, and she was alone, but she was not going to be silenced. Girl picked up the yellow legal pad and ripped off her father’s note. She wrote two pages on acceptable behavior, “blah blah blah, coming home on time, blah blah blah, leaving the phone number of where I’ll be …” and then wrote two more pages on exactly what she thought of him as a father. “You never called on my birthday, you didn’t tell me what time to come home, you always loved Brother more than me …” a long emotional vomit of old hurts and new injustices. She left her pages on top of her father’s note, went into her room, and waited.
That evening she heard her father come into the apartment. Click—that was his key in the door, thud—the door shut. She stayed in her room, one ear pressed against her door. She heard the rustle of him taking off his shoes, and knew he was lining them up neatly on the mat, like always. The closet door opened and shut as he hung up his coat. Mother and Stepmother never took off their shoes neatly or hung up their coats the minute they came home, but Father was regimented about everything in his life. When she heard the crinkle of paper, she sat on her bed and picked up a book, so it would look like she wasn’t nervous. She was not very good at insolence.
Father tapped lightly on her door. When she opened it, he stood there holding out the cordless phone. “I can see you learned your lesson,” he said, then pulled Girl into a tight hug. “I love you so much, Girl.” She didn’t reply. Father reached in his pocket and pulled out his shiny eel-skin wallet and peeled off three twenty-dollar bills. “Here,” he said. “I’m sorry.” Girl took the money and put it in her jeans pocket.
“Love you, too, Father,” she said, and listened to him talk about Thanksgiving at church. All she wanted was to call her mother.
cool
Suzy gave Girl two pairs of skintight jeans. Suzy was tiny, and the jeans were so tight on Girl that she could barely sit down, but Girl didn’t care. She was finally cool. She had to lie down on her bed to zip them, and then her stomach hurt so much that she couldn’t eat, which was awesome, because even though she was too tall, she figured if she kept her weight under one hundred pounds she could still be a jockey someday. Girl had never had a flat stomach even though she was thin, and not eating made her happy. Suzy showed her how to melt the tip of her eyeliner to make the line thicker and blacker. Father let her buy a pair of black satin stiletto heels, and she wore them to school every day.
Girl woke up at 5:30 every morning to catch the bus at 6:45. She curled her bangs under; even though it was no longer cool in New York to wear it that way, it still was in Alaska. She wore pale pink lipstick to accentuate the tan she acquired at the tanning beds at the mall. Every few weeks she dyed her hair a different color: first mahogany, then red, then black, then auburn. She hoped that if she found the right color, she would suddenly become beautiful.
cutting
By November, just six weeks after Girl moved to Alaska, Jack fell in love with her best friend.
She was half in love with Suzy herself, in the way that high school girls get in jealous fights when their best friend hangs out with other girls. Not in a way that involved kissing. Suzy was tiny and fragile, and had eczema and asthma and delicate bones that made everything she wore look like high fashion. It was as if she were made of glass. Suzy didn’t need much makeup to be alluring with her blond hair and green eyes, and next to her, Girl felt like a big, awkward Amazon.
Do you know the sound of the wind, way up high in the atmosphere when there’s a front moving in? It’s a deep roar, almost like the sound of waves. That was what it sounded like when Jack kissed Suzy for the first time, in Girl’s apartment, on Father’s bed. They told Girl to get lost. Girl went into her bedroom and closed the door.
Dark comes early in Alaska’s November. There was a window over Girl’s bed, and outside she could see the lights of the snow-covered city glowing orange like sunset or a nuclear spill. Back home in Rochester their streetlights glowed yellow-white, and in Mother’s house, her walls were soft pink with gauzy white curtains. Here Girl had clinical white walls and mini-blinds.
Father had converted the apartment’s dining room to a bedroom with a wall made of bookcases, and he stored his clothes in the linen closet, all rolled into perfect cylinders that never wrinkled. He used the top drawer of her dresser to hold his odds and ends—old photographs, belt buckles, and pocketknives. Father loved pocketknives. One in particular had a bone handle, and you had to push in a little button on the side to fold it closed. Girl was always afraid it would snap shut on her finger. Father had told her that it was his sharpest blade—sharp enough to shave with, which he proved one evening, using the knife to remove a few long, soft hairs from his arm. Girl took the knife from his drawer and sat on her bed. “It can cut you before you even feel it,” her father had said. Cut you before you feel it sounded exactly like what Girl was looking for.
The blond, four-poster bed frame was her half-sister’s, left behind when she moved to Seattle a few years before. The stained mattress and box spring were found at the curb in the Anchorage ghetto, her father pulling over his Subaru suddenly to ask two boys her age if they would sell it to him. Of course they would—they were throwing it out anyway. There’s a look to a cheap mattress that age can’t disguise: visible springs showing through the cheap fabric—this one red and bright blue, covered with a bold print featuring pilgrims —sparse threads showing needle holes at the welt, a distinctive lack of padding. Girl’s mattress in Rochester was decorated with white roses embroidered on yellow satin. Mother bought the mattress new, though she didn’t have money for extravagances. Father was not only a doctor, but a double specialist in pediatric gastroenterology—the only one in Alaska. He could have afforded a new mattress, but it wasn’t a purchase he was willing to make.
If Girl were back home in New York, her mother would be coming home for dinner soon, she thought as she sat on her dilapidated bed. Mother would have made Jack and Suzy leave. She would have held Girl when she cried. There was no use in t
hinking about that. This was her father’s house, and he was rarely home, leaving his dog tied up outside and only a Siamese cat to keep Girl company.
Girl sat on the bed, the shiny knife in her hands. She cried—of course she cried. Her shudders were filled with self-loathing. What was so wrong with her that she could not be someone anyone wanted? Girl wanted to pull the pain out of her body and lay it at Jack and Suzy’s feet. She did not want to cry anymore—it gave her a migraine. She did not know how to make herself whole again.
Girl opened the knife. She didn’t want to die, not really, nor did she want to be one of those overly dramatic girls with bandages on their barely-scratched wrists. Besides, Girl had heard that if you cut wrong, you could sever your tendons and be forced to live out the rest of your life with hands dangling uselessly at the end of your arms. If not wrists, what? Something she could hide from parents and teachers. Her ankle.
Girl still sat on the bed, her right ankle resting on her left knee. This new project dried her tears and focused her attention. “My ex-boyfriend and my best friend, my ex-boyfriend and my best friend,” Girl chanted over and over in her head. Jack technically had never considered himself her boyfriend, but Girl had no other word for this boy who broke her heart. She placed the tip of the knife against her skin, drawing it down on a diagonal. Barely a scratch. She pressed harder and produced a thin red line. She added another one.
Girl left her room to see if they were done cooing and kissing yet—they weren’t. “Get out of here, Girl,” Suzy said. It was dark in her father’s room, and Girl couldn’t see them, but Girl could hear their giggles and wet-mouth noises. Girl went back to her room and cut another line, then went back into the hall. “Girl! Go!” Suzy admonished. Girl returned to her bedroom and added another slice, each one deeper. She decided to tally up all the times they hurt her, every kiss, every giggle, every time they admonished her to leave them alone. She ended up with seven lines on each ankle. She wished she had focused more on evenly spacing her gashes, but too late. Bloody lines can’t be erased.
The next time Girl walked into the hallway, she pushed up the cuffs of her jeans and turned on the light. She wanted to make sure they saw what she had done. Suzy did not break down in tears, run to hug her, or even apologize.
“What a freak show,” Jack said.
“I know. Crazy. I better get home before my mom does,” Suzy answered. They left the apartment fast, slamming the door behind them. Girl cried herself to sleep. Her father did not come home that night to see the lines on her ankles. Girl had given in to crazy and won nothing.
The next day Girl went to the school nurse’s office and showed the nurse her legs.
“What happened?” the nurse asked.
“Um, I was carving a piece of wood, and I dropped my knife,” she replied lamely.
“Fourteen times?” The nurse looked into her face hard, but Girl didn’t answer.
“Look, there’s a support group I run at lunch once a week. It’s for kids to talk to each other about their problems. If you want to go, I won’t report this to anyone.”
“Okay, I’ll go,” she said. Relief flooded her, but she was careful not to let it show. She needed someone to keep her from falling deeper into this pit. She wasn’t a bad kid. She smoked some pot and skipped some classes, but it wasn’t because she didn’t care about anything. Girl did it because she cared too much and life overwhelmed her and she couldn’t see how to get out from inside her skin. She was willing to try the self-help group. She didn’t stop getting high or skipping class, but now she felt guilty about it. She never cut herself again.
cardboard letter
Stepmother had not wanted Girl to move to Alaska, but there was nothing she could do about it. She could not argue. What if Girl’s father took them to court for full custody? They were lesbians. No judge would give them custody when there was a heterosexual man there asking to keep the children. She rummaged through her desk until she found her savings account booklet and checked the balance. She always kept enough money tucked away so that if anything happened to the children when they were in Alaska, she and Mother could get on a plane and rescue them. She saw that she still had enough in the bank and tried to breathe easier.
The boy was trouble, but Girl? She was so smart—she could do anything she wanted. She was always so good, she liked getting good grades and mostly did her chores. Stepmother loved her so much. She wanted Girl to be a teacher, or a psychologist—she was smart enough and her heart was so kind. Sometimes Stepmother worried that Girl would marry some pathetic creature in a wheelchair because she just wanted to take care of all the little hurt creatures in the world. Of course she loved Brother, too, but she just wished he would apply himself for once. He didn’t seem to care about anything except video games.
Girl had left for Alaska in October. She didn’t call very often, not on Thanksgiving, not once a week like she had promised. But sometimes Girl would call and yell at Mother for no reason at all. She would say all kinds of hateful things until her mother cried. Then Girl would hang up. Stepmother didn’t know what was wrong with the child. She thought about drugs for a moment, but that couldn’t be it. Girl was an A student. She was never in trouble. The only thing to do would be to get her little girl to come home so she could talk some sense into her, explain to her how much she was hurting her mother. She wrote a letter—she would fix this.
“You must come home. I don’t know what is going on up there but you must come home. You are hurting your mother. I don’t know what is going on with you. Your mother and I love you so much.” She signed her name as she always did, drawing little animal faces at the bottom of the page like Girl used to like before she became a teenager.
She needed to make sure that Girl got the letter. She knew Girl would come home once she remembered how much they loved her and how happy they had been. Girl used to have friends spend the night every weekend, and she’d had a boyfriend or two. The little girl was beautiful, even if she did like to wear way too much eye shadow. Stepmother had always begged her not to hide her beautiful face under all that goop, but Girl had just rolled her eyes. She must get her home. What if Girl’s father was molesting her? Father was a pervert, everyone knew that. He better not touch her daughter. She would kill him.
Stepmother taped her letter to a piece of cardboard so it wouldn’t get lost and sent it registered mail, even though it cost eight dollars. She knew if her daughter got the letter she’d come home right away.
Girl got the piece of cardboard, turning it over in her hands—so strange. A letter taped to a piece of cardboard, torn from a box, by the look of it. She noticed the postage and couldn’t believe that Stepmother would spend extra money to send a letter. She opened it and read her stepmother’s familiar round cursive. Like always, Stepmother had drawn little animals under her signature. Girl was never going home. She didn’t want to live in that house and go to that school where all the boys barked at her and some kids still called her Lezzie. In Alaska, she was finally cool. She didn’t have rules and she skipped school whenever she wanted. She had friends and weed and a black leather jacket. Girl didn’t write Stepmother back, but she got high and called her mother, telling her how much she hated New York and everything that was wrong with the family. The next morning, she couldn’t remember what she had said, only the sound of her mother crying as Girl hung up without saying goodbye.
winter
Winter is intrinsic to Alaska, cold is part of its very soul, although there had been no snow for the last three winters, only ice. The year Girl moved to Anchorage winter came back with a vengeance—snow four feet deep, and temperatures down to forty below zero. Father had a round thermometer in the yard outside Girl’s bedroom window. She looked at it before she got dressed every morning. As light as it was in the summer, it was that dark in winter: the sun rose at 9:00 a.m. and set at 3:00 p.m., so when Girl had detention, she didn’t see the sun at all. She walked to the bus stop in the dark, the streetlights and houselights
reflected and spread on the snow, like a layer of fog. Girl wore an unlined black leather jacket over a half-shirt that always showed her belly button. She had only two pairs of shoes: blue denim high-top Converse sneakers that she wore without socks, and black satin stiletto heels. She didn’t have cool socks, so she wore none at all, Miami Vice style. It was 1987, and while the hit TV show was losing popularity, Girl was from New York, so she was able to excuse any fashion faux pas she made at East Anchorage High as being a New York thing. She knew the other kids had no idea that although she had lived in New York state, she had never actually been to New York City. They thought the whole state was New York City, which was indisputably the coolest and toughest place in the United States. Everyone was afraid of her.
Girl always lost her gloves so she kept her hands in her pockets. She got up at 5:30 a.m. so her hair and makeup were just right. Before school she changed clothes … three times? Five times? Trying so hard to be perfect. Anchorage was in a valley, so the dry air was untouched by wind. Surprisingly, she was rarely too cold, even though she wasn’t dressed appropriately.
Girl was fighting to be cool. She had her braces removed, because the new orthodontist had a different plan from the one in New York. Suzy gave her skintight jeans and Father bought her stretch pants, as they called leggings, and half shirts. Wayne, the boy next door, gave her a leather jacket with Michael Jackson zippers, then Bob gave her a better, zipper-free one. Girl would do anything to be cool. She didn’t mind being cold if it meant no one called her a nerd. No one barked at her in Alaska. The only kind of beautiful she wanted to be was sexy. Her breasts grew from 34C to 34D that autumn. She got her weight down from 115 pounds to 97 pounds, because skinnier was sexier, but she couldn’t sustain it. Her legs were long and had a gap between her thighs. Was it good to have a gap? Was it bad? Did her legs look knock-kneed? She only knew thigh gaps were a thing to worry over because an older teenaged girl commented on Girl’s. She had to remember to not lock her knees when she stood, because it made a weird concave silhouette, but it was comfortable. She walked with her weight in her heels, her feet rolled out so she wore down her shoes on the outside edge. When she walked, her boobs bounced under her shirt, but she didn’t know how else to walk. She tried hard to be less bouncy, but she could not make her body behave. Always the throbbing of her crotch. The need to rub when she was home alone, the need to kiss and rip clothes off boys and feel their hands. The boys always hurt her breasts when they touched them, squeezing and sucking the nipples too hard. Only, if they weren’t so rough, it felt like nothing. She thought maybe the nerves were buried too deep because her breasts were so big. But between her legs she wanted them to touch and touch and touch. She could not get the same feeling on her own, even though she had been rubbing herself to fall asleep for as long as she could remember. She needed a boy to make the light explode with their sweaty hips thrusting harder and deeper.
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