by Strong, Mimi
I didn't even know if we were together, but we had to break up.
Immediately.
Already, my solid thoughts were eroding. I had to break up with her while I was still lucid inside this dry desert of knowledge.
I looked around the room for my phone, but the room was hiding it.
Charity wiggled across the floor toward me, moving like an inchworm in a storybook, and then she was at my feet, my knees. She smiled and winked at me, then turned her back and hooked her armpits on top of my knees and sat on the floor between my feet. She reached up and flipped out her long, flaxen hair, so it was cascading up my inner thighs. The gold river of hair started to make me feel charitable toward Charity.
My body relaxed, relief flooding my system. I was less baked than a minute earlier. We were no longer on a spaceship.
Everything was connected and my whole life made sense. I could see clearly now that everything was completely, utterly wrong.
Chapter Twenty-One
AUBREY
One thing I loved about working at the bar was being in a child-free zone. I didn't mind being around children, but constantly comparing myself to other parents was exhausting.
First, there were the super-parents. Their kids had clean, nice clothes and said please and thank you under the parents' vigilant watch. I watched them and tried to learn.
Then there were the parents who'd given up. Their dirty-faced kids ran around like monkeys, and the parents didn't care. Those kids seemed to be just as happy as the ones who said please and thank you.
No matter what you do as a parent, someone's going to think you're doing it wrong.
Some judgmental wench thinks you're doing it wrong.
I was grocery shopping with Bell, back when she'd just turned five and was going through a real bossy stage. We were in the line, and she made a point of asking if we could buy everything. The magazines, the chocolate bars, the gum, and even those little plastic chip-bag clips. You name it, she felt it was her right as a small person to have it, and who could blame her? All around her, other kids were getting things.
I pulled open my purse and grabbed a sucker for her. A moment later, she was slurping away happily on the sucker, breathing heavily through one crusted-up nostril. She had a head cold, and I kept tending to her with tissues, but she was fine with a little crust. I had my hands full digging out coupons and paying for our budgeted items. We were three dollars over what I wanted to spend, and I was considering putting something back when I heard someone behind us sigh heavily. Twice.
I turned to find a skinny woman in yoga clothes standing behind us. Her hair was soaking wet, like she'd just stepped out of a pool, and she had a yoga mat under her arm. “Sugar weakens the immune system,” the woman said.
There was a scent of garlic coming from the woman, and I realized the water was her sweat.
Fucking health freaks.
I was in no mood.
We'd just been kicked out of the place we'd been living. It was an illegal sublet we were sharing with another woman who had two little boys. Her kids seemed to sleep in shifts so that one of them could keep us up with his banging and playing.
I'd thought our living situation couldn't get worse, but then it did, when the owner of the building came into the suite while we were all sleeping, did a head count, and told us we had twelve hours to get our stuff out before he called the police.
Some people would have stayed and used their knowledge of the tenant-friendly rental laws in that state to live there for months without paying rent. I knew plenty of people who did that, but I couldn't take the risk of my name being entered into a database. The other woman was hiding out from her abusive ex-husband who was a cop. Off we scattered, the five of us, like rats in a basement when the lights flick on.
That day in the grocery store, the woman in the yoga pants got to me.
Her main concerns were buying non-medicated chicken and sticking her nose in my life.
I thought about thanking her for her concern. It takes a village and all that. And perhaps since she was so invested in Bell's welfare, she could load us up in her massive SUV and drive us to her house to stay the night.
Instead, I said, “These suckers are made from fruit juice.”
She puckered her lips, her cheeks hollowing. Why did rich people try to look like they were starving? The world made no sense.
“Sugar is sugar,” she said.
Her front teeth looked healthy and sharp. I wondered, for a moment, what it would feel like to punch her in the mouth. To see the surprise on her face as her incisors caught on my knuckles and tore open my skin. The violent urge I felt scared me. All it takes is for us to be pushed to our limit, day after day, and then one more fucking awful thing happens and we snap. We lash out. We defend ourselves.
Calmly, I reached over into her grocery cart and shifted things around. There it was. A box of low-fat ice cream sandwiches hiding underneath the leafy vegetables.
“Sugar is sugar,” I said.
She glared at me. “All things in moderation.”
“Why don't you mind your own fucking business… in moderation.”
I took out a second sucker and put it in my mouth.
She muttered something involving the phrase white trash.
“I might be white trash, but you're a piece of shit and I bet your kids turn out to be assholes, just like you.”
She backed her cart away, muttering about the horror of me swearing in front of my child, saying she would go to another lineup for the benefit of my poor, sweet child not having to hear more profanity.
I looked down at Bell, who was staring up at me with wide eyes, happily slurping on her sucker.
Next, I pulled another sucker out of my purse and popped it in my mouth.
No wonder Bell perked right up when I gave her one. Candy in your mouth goes a long way to making the world seem less shitty.
So does beer. And gin. And tequila. No wonder my uncle referred to the bar sometimes as a “candy store for grown-ups.”
I liked having a job where people generally left in a better mood than when they came in. At the fast food places I'd worked, people would leave after a heavy meal looking like they'd just dealt with something unpleasant but necessary.
My shift on Saturday was going well enough, though having to go five minutes between checking my phone for messages from Sawyer was painful. I'd never been too much into my phone, but I finally understood those people who kept the phone out on the table next to them at all times.
Sawyer and his roommate were having a party that night at their house. I'd considered going, but two things were stopping me.
My grandmother had a head cold and she was already taking care of Bell at the apartment while I was at work, so I didn't want to push for a late night or overnight. I'd be lucky if Bell or both of us didn't get her cold, though she assured me she was sneezing into her elbow and washing her hands frequently. Bell's school had a pretty tough policy on sick kids staying home, and so a cold meant lost income for me.
Secondly, making an official appearance at Sawyer's party scared me. Some of his friends were bound to hate me, it was just a matter of averages. Not everybody in this world likes you.
Sawyer was messaging me from a store, where apparently people mistook him for being an employee there. I couldn't understand how this was funny. Finally, he explained that three separate people had approached him, which was different from just one or two, and he should have probably led with that, but whatever. Some people aren't great at relaying anecdotes.
His frustration came through with his messages, and I wanted to tell him I felt it too. Of course I wanted to be with him at the store buying soda, seeing his blue shirt in person instead of trying to imagine it. I wanted to be at his house party that night, rather than at work. Who wouldn't?
But it was too soon to have him meet Bell. She wasn't settled in.
I had to hold on to the idea there was a future for us—some future time wh
en Bell wasn't acting like a ticking time bomb at school and I could consider introducing a new element to her life. In the meantime, Sawyer and I could see each other when our schedules allowed.
He didn't know, but I had all day Sunday set aside just for us. Natalie and Dave were going to pick Bell up from our place and take the girls to the zoo in Abbotsford. They'd be gone all day, and I had my own wild animal plans for Sawyer.
My coworker with the purple-hued hair came and put her arm around me while I was trying to read Sawyer's last text.
Lana said, “So, tomorrow. You're gonna ring the dinner bell.”
I shushed her, embarrassed my uncle would hear—not that I had any idea what her expression meant. Was it a reference to oral sex? Or just something people around there said? I had a feeling it was a Lana-ism.
“Don't do the Altoids thing,” she said. “You know, where you eat the mints and then you-know. He'll be screaming, all right, but for the wrong reasons.”
“Honestly, Lana, we're not at the props stage.”
“Ice cubes?”
“Three words: what, how, and why?”
“You just rub the ice up and down the body to make the skin cold, then you lick off the water with your hot mouth. Cold and hot. As for why… I gotta say why not?”
Imagining ice cubes melting on Sawyer's chest made me have feelings. Feelings I didn't want to have at work, around people who were not Sawyer.
Lana made a shaking gesture with one hand. “First the ice cubes, then ring the dinner bell.”
“Or we could go for a long walk.”
She seemed to consider this for a moment. “Curtis and I made love in Stanley Park once. I didn't want to get all-the-way-undressed on account of all the squirrels watching. They weren't even the healthy-looking squirrels, but the ones with the skinny little tails like pipe cleaners, and missing patches of fur. It wasn't very romantic, but if you do decide to go for it in a park, under the nice trees, remember to bring a blanket, and also some of those Wet Naps to clean yourself off with after.”
“Not gonna happen. Outdoors? No way.”
“It's natural. What did people do before houses?”
“They had sex in huts.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “What about before huts?”
“I don't know, caves?”
She grabbed me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes. “Honey, does he make you happy?”
“I hardly know him. You worked with him. You probably know him better than I do. Actually, there's something I've been meaning to ask. Does he have… a violent streak, you think?”
Just then, I noticed a table full of people in my section, looking around with their necks long and their heads popped up like gophers. I excused myself and went to take their order.
When I came back, I asked Lana again about Sawyer's temperament. “If he's going to be around Bell, I need to know he's not going to be a bad influence.”
Looking down as she sliced some limes behind the bar, she said, “I never seen him hit nobody.”
“Except for when he punched out that redneck who grabbed me?”
She looked embarrassed. “Right. That happened. Yeah, besides that, I guess.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket with another message from Sawyer, and I felt guilty for asking around about him.
Some new people came into the bar, and as I glanced over, I saw something that made me feel like I'd been punched in the stomach. My throat burned and I could barely breathe. I held very still, motionless, and watched as the man crossed in front of me, mere feet away, and took a stool at the bar.
My eyes were playing tricks on me, making me think I was seeing Damion when I wasn't. It wasn't him, but this man could be his brother. Did Derek have other offspring running around? Same strong nose with the hump on the bridge. Same dark hair and eyes, same cruel edge to his mouth, like he was always on the verge of spitting.
This guy wasn't Damion, because his eyes were set too close together, but a part of me still felt his presence, as though I was being watched, and the real Damion was nearby in the shadows.
Damion's betrayal wasn't like a regular memory, that faded with time, but like a hot fire poker jabbing into me.
We had sex in my little unheated bedroom the first time, and then the second time. He kept coming by when my mother and Derek were out, and after seven times, I lost count and it just became a regular weekend thing. This went on for over a year, and we did all of the things I'd heard about from people at school or seen in movies.
Apart from that first time, he never hurt me.
I knew some girls who'd been raped by family members and they said they were ashamed, even though it wasn't their fault.
My shameful secret was that I enjoyed having sex with Damion. I looked forward to his visits. I never asked him to make it official and have an actual relationship that people knew about, because I didn't want to scare him away. Sex was just something we did, and pretended we didn't.
Even though he was my mother's boyfriend's son, he wasn't my brother. He was six years older than me, and had never lived with us, or even in the trailer. He'd barely even known his father until he was twenty.
Sometimes, though, he'd come over for dinner and we'd all sit together, and he'd tease me the way I imagined brothers did. I'd look over and imagine him naked, on top of me, saying those dirty things to me that he loved to say, and I'd feel so hot and so guilty.
What scared me was not knowing how it was going to end. I was pretty sure he'd get a girlfriend and stop coming over. Then one weekend he brought a girl by for dinner to meet his father. He'd been seeing her for months, and I never knew.
Later that night he came back, on his own. I hadn't been expecting him, since my mother and Derek were home and sleeping just down the hall. Plus I'd met his girlfriend.
I woke up with him lying on top of me, grinning down at me in the dark.
And then, without a word from either of us, we fucked. Just like that. And I'm not gonna lie. It was really good.
Ever since then, half the time when I had a really bad nightmare, that was it. Me waking up with Damion on top of me, and then us fucking, even though I knew it was wrong and dirty.
I wished I'd had the sense to end whatever we had, but his father, Derek, was the one who put out the fire.
At first, Derek made a few comments around the house that made me suspicious. I thought maybe he'd been reading my secret diary—not the dummy one, but the one hidden in the ceiling.
Then he got the new tattoo.
My mother always pretended to hate Derek's tattoos. She said they were creepy and satanic, but I'd seen her staring at the red and black swirls on his forearms like she was in love with the tattoos themselves.
In amidst the flames on his arms, Derek had images of naked women of all types. There was a red devil girl with horns, and a pin-up girl posing on a chair, her hair on fire. The new tattoo he got was different. Brighter. All blue tones and a light ink that was close to white. The new tattoo was an angel, with her halo held in one hand, and her knee in the other hand, spreading her legs wide open to show her white panties.
Not long after he got the tattoo, Derek and I were alone in the house together, because my mother was visiting a friend of hers. We were sitting on the same couch, at either end, and he had pulled the plastic wrap and tape off his arm to show me his newest tattoo.
The angel on Derek's forearm was vivid, shiny and slick under a coating of Polysporin.
“Awesome,” I said, my voice snarling with sarcasm.
“You love my tattoos.”
“You're gross.”
“Hey, Aubrey, wanna know a secret?”
I was trying to watch the TV, but he wouldn't let up, so finally I said, “What?”
“That's you,” Derek said. “Spreading your legs for my son.”
“Fuck you.” I turned back to the TV and pretended I wasn't bothered by what he'd said.
He laughed and muttered something unde
r his breath. I heard “sweet sixteen” and “virgin.”
Though my heart was pounding, I stayed right there on the couch and pretended nothing was wrong. I wasn't going to let him get to me. I wanted to pick up the nearest thing and smash it into his stupid face, but I just sat there, quietly pretending to watch the TV.
He went to the kitchen to get another drink, and he called out to me, as if we were buddies, asking if I wanted a beer or something else.
I wanted to yell and scream at him to die, just die, but instead I called back, “No thanks! I've got my Diet Coke and I'm fine.”
For the last two weeks, Damion hadn't been coming to visit me. About a month earlier, Derek had started looking at me funny, like he knew. I'd asked Damion, who swore he'd never said a word, even though the two of them hung out all the time. Damion even looked me right in the eyes, but it was like he was looking through me, to the back of my head, and I knew he was lying.
I hated Damion for using me, and I hated Derek for making me feel worthless. I hated them both, and I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Someone was talking to me.
He repeated himself, saying something about darts.
The man seated at the bar was not Damion. I drifted back to reality, and I knew it was real because everything was so heavy. My head was heavy, and I was so tired. And cold.
“There's no space for darts,” he said.
The man with the dark hair stared at me with his dark eyes. His mouth didn't have a cruel edge now that he was talking.
I wasn't back at that trailer. I was free of that old life and all the hate, in my new life now.
The man looked at me like I was a real idiot.
“Um. No, sir, we don't have darts,” I said.
“What's your name, little darlin'?”
I held up my left hand, flashing the gold band his way. I hadn't worn the ring when I was out with Sawyer, but I didn't forget to wear it to work.
“My name's Mrs. Braun,” I said.
He chuckled. “Well, sheeee-it.” He rapped his knuckles on the bar. “Ain't life a big steamin' bowl of too-bad. I hope he treats you right.”