Sorry, I say, for blocking your view.
It’s no biggie, he says. He takes my hand again, pulls me onto the bed next to him, and we lie like that, side by side, looking up at his ceiling, at the flickering pattern the leaves make on his ceiling, at the flickering blue light between each leaf.
Have you heard of fucking? he asks, raising his voice over Danny’s mother’s screams.
I think so, I tell him.
Good, he says.
Oh, definitely, I say.
After a few minutes he reaches down, pulls my nightgown up. I’m going to look at you, he says. I hear the toilet flush, try to keep my voice as quiet as possible when I say, Okay.
He doesn’t pull my underwear down like I thought he might. Instead he uses two fingers to yank the crotch over to the side, and I have to open my legs a bit wider. I can feel the breath from his nostrils down there, he is taking deep, calm breaths. It smells a little, he says. Not a bad smell, but definitely a smell. An odor, really. But again, not bad.
Oh, good, I say. That’s good.
Hang on, he says, and jumps off the bed, pushes things around on his desk. Danny’s father brandishes an axe, smiling, laughing. When Peggy’s brother comes back he has a magnifying glass and a flashlight, and when he is next to me again he pulls the panties over with one hand, holds the magnifying glass in the other, bites the flashlight between his teeth. He prods a little, the way my mother does to her pizza dough on Friday nights, then pulls the two folds apart.
Wow, he says, the flashlight bobbing up and down. It’s so ugly, but in a very great way. You know? I want to look at it forever.
The flickering pattern on the ceiling flickers faster, the wind picking up and faintly whistling, and I remember my dad telling me at breakfast that it would rain tonight, folding one corner of his paper down to look at me, then snapping it back up once I’d said, Oh, really? Oh yes, he’d said, we are going to have quite a storm.
It’s this thought, the thought of my dad in his work clothes in our yellow kitchen this morning, reading the paper, letting the dog lick bacon grease from his fingers, that makes me want, more than ever, to get out of Peggy’s brother’s room. I have to go, I tell him.
Wait, he says, holding me by the hips, spitting the flashlight over the side of the bed and tossing the magnifying glass over with it. He locks eyes with mine, and I feel dared, I recognize the dare whirling behind his eyes, feel his heartbeat pick up against my thigh, and then he is lowering his head, I see the heart-shaped bit of his scalp at the top of his head, I feel his soft lips, hear the same smacking kiss my mother used to place on my forehead at night, hear him say, I just really wanted to kiss it. And then he lets my underwear go, lets the crotch snap back in place, he pulls down my nightgown, says Don’t step on my magnifying glass on your way out.
When I leave, Danny’s father is limping through a snowy maze.
In the living room the girls say Where the h-e-double-hockey-sticks were you? and You missed it—Grace and Peggy just touched each other’s boobs for fifteen whole seconds, and It’s your turn—Truth or Dare?
Dare, I say, and I’m dared to go outside in the rain and roll naked in Peggy’s mother’s garden. Which of course I do, because the garden is right underneath his window, and maybe somehow that makes me part of what comes through his window, part of what’s flickering on his ceiling, part of those shapes, part of that light, part of that blue blue light.
LOVE SONG
It was my birthday and Daddy picked me up and he was drunk and we drove to the mall and I waited at a Ruby Tuesday’s and ate me a pot of French onion soup while Daddy did the rounds at the various jewelry stores trying to sell jewelry from God knows where. I sat by a window so I could see him at the Kay’s across the way and he was showing the turquoise rings he wears on his own hands to the lady behind the counter and it was clear she was ready for him to move on. She had on a red turtleneck that made her boobums look all cone-shaped and I wondered did she stuff her shirt with some kind of funnels? She folded her arms up under them things and it just made the situation all the worse, and then Daddy leaned over and poked the lady right over her heart, he was making some kind of point that appalled the lady with its passion, passion’s a big thing with Daddy, and the lady dropped her arms and looked around her and out into the mall hoping someone would come in for a watch or a pair of earrings and save her, and then Daddy leaned back, holding his palms up to show how harmless he was, then pulled his pinky ring off and shoved it onto the lady’s finger. Daddy calls that going in for the kill. The lady held her hand out like he’d taken each finger into his mouth and sucked off the salt, and Daddy flicked one of his business cards onto the counter and backed out, holding his palms up again, like, Look at me everyone, I just tamed a wild beast and made it my wife. After a couple steps he tripped on the carpeting and the spell was broken, his hands flopped down to his sides and he looked around like he’d been beamed there from somewhere else, and he turned on his heel and went around the corner and disappeared, on his way to the Zales or the Jared’s down at the other end of the mall. The lady with the pointed boobs shook her hand till the ring fell off and I couldn’t tell where it landed. She reached down and brought up a spritzer of blue cleaning solution and spritzed her hand a dozen times, then wiped it with a cloth. Her hair was askew and I knew she was rattled, but she’d get over it, everyone gets over it, or they don’t.
I drank me four more Cokes and then Daddy come back in with his tie all undid and one of his shirttails hanging out looking like it had recently been wadded and then dipped in something wet. He slid into the booth and took a swallow from my fifth Coke, said You need you some kick to that, girl, brought out the flask from his coat pocket and poured in a fistful of something colorless, took a long pull, muttered, Good girl through wet lips. He played with a dinner roll, the rings on his fingers clinking quietly. She was a twatter, ain’t she? he asked, gesturing with his forehead toward the Kay’s. The roll looked all punched through and hollowed out and Daddy put it in his mouth and stood up, tucking in his shirttail. Let’s hit it, he said.
In the car Daddy had on the music real loud, singing “I ain’t never been with a woman long enough / for my boots to get old / we been together so long now / they both need resoled. / If I ever settled down, you’d be my kind / and it’s a good time for me to head on down the line.” He turned it down long enough to say, You listen real good girlie, they’s lots of truth in this song. He had both windows down and his tie was blowing every which way, the wind playing in his hair, his smile showing gummy bits from the roll, and I could tell he wanted me to glean something real deep from the song, something about him, but sometimes hard as you try meaningful moments like that are just moments like any other, the sky up in the sky and traffic going by and Daddy stopping playing the air flute just long enough to swerve around a semi and his breath like something aflame. “Always something greener / on the other side of that hill / I was born a wrangler and a rounder / and I guess I always will. / Heard it in a love song / heard it in a love song / heard it in a love song / can’t be wrong.”
We turned into Gator’s, Daddy’s favorite establishment, and as we parked he belched my name, drawing it out, something I used to love, then he added I planned something real special for you on your special day, his breath going out at the last word, sounding wet, him pounding his chest a little till the red in his face turned to pink. Shew, he said in his normal voice, then Damn blast it! when he dinged the car in the next spot with his door as he got out. I need me a drink, he announced, hoisting up his pants, breaking into a jog toward Gator’s.
Inside, the music was loud and Daddy did a little soft shoe up to the hostess. Darlin, we have a reserve, he said, under Birthday Girlie. The girl walked us over to a small table with two stools. These your menus, she said, but we out of chicken fingers because they spoilt the other day. Daddy ordered a double whiskey and two Cokes, and when the hostess wandered off he presented me with a Ziploc of quarters.
Happy Birthday, sweetness, he said. That’s enough for at least two games of eight-ball, if you can stand it. You ready to get your tail whupped? The flatscreen on the wall behind him was playing the Home Shopping Network. A woman with a helmet of hair gritted a smile and held a doll toward the camera like it was radioactive. The word BEAUTIFUL was stamped across the screen in urgent block letters, flashing like a neon sign on its way to burning out.
Daddy racked and hit all the solids into the pocket, pointing at me and laughing with every ball sunk, but he got distracted by his third double whiskey and seemed content just wilting into his stool while I watched a man swab what looked like streaks of blood off a woodgrain floor with a supersize Q-tip on the TV. A lady walked by and Daddy’s eyes lit up and he lurched off the stool and grabbed her elbow. The woman’s hair looked fragile with bleach, her face pocked and her eyes lined in blue. She smiled at Daddy and I could see where she was missing one of her bottom teeth. Honey, he screamed, this my girlfriend Sewanee. The lady threw back her head and laughed like her throat was working metal against metal. Is that what we calling it now, she said when her head was righted. Daddy laughed and said, Yeah and it was obvious he hadn’t heard what she said. This my child, he told the lady. She’s sixteen today. Pleased to meet you, the lady said, holding out her hand like I should kiss the leathery knuckles. She leaned in, said Let me ask you, you a tough bitch yet? You made of chain mail yet? I could smell her cinnamon chewing gum and her powdery perfume. When I didn’t answer she said You work on that. Work on getting mean, hear? Daddy was swaying and staring hard just to the right and I knew he was trying to get back his focus. I put my hand in his, said I got to go home now and do my homework. The lady patted Daddy on the cheek and sat herself at the bar and Daddy slurped down the rest of his drink and followed me out the door.
It was dark out, the lights in the parking lot doing more to make the sky look dark than anything, and Daddy fumbled for his keys for a while before they spilled from his pocket and landed at his feet. I’m fixin to drive, I told Daddy. Aw-ight, Daddy said, but don’t be thinking I ain’t still got a pair, girlie, your Daddy’s just all fucked up tonight and empty as a pocket.
On the highway Daddy drifted off, his snores like a clogged chainsaw. I held my breath in the dark spots between streetlights. Daddy woke when I took the exit ramp, twitching hard and rubbing his nose. You notice how things that’s ugly look pretty when it’s nighttime? He pointed at a gas station as we passed. Like look how gorgeous that is, that white light through them windows and that solitary Indian clerk just existing inside. It probably smells like donuts and hot dongs in there and I’d like to go in and talk with him, Daddy said. I wish I could talk to everyone on this earth. Suddenly he put his hand up on his mouth and held it there a minute, and when he took it away he whispered You cain’t hold your liquor down, you don’t deserve to drank it.
I pulled up to Daddy’s apartment. The lights were off and I wondered did that make it ugly to him. Here we are, Daddy, I said, and Daddy snorted, said Here ain’t it, girlie. We there, we not here. This is there. You get me? I helped him to the door, him putting all his weight on me and smelling good, like aftershave, and bad, like something pickled in sweat and rubbing alcohol. When we got inside Daddy lurched head first and landed on the couch, rasped Happy Day of Birth girlie, you suck a gopher’s asshole at pool and just ‘cause you sixteen don’t mean you can get to going around with any boys. I flipped the lights on as I left, Daddy’s mouth slack and his nose letting fly a meek whistling, then before the door met the jamb Daddy put up his head and called out I could just crush you to death with love, sweetness.
I walked to the bus stop on the corner, thinking about the scuffs on his shoes and how there was still nothing on his walls and how if you’re lonely and drunken I guess it makes sense that you’d be finding meanings everywhere your eyes fell and believing with your whole body in some hillbilly song about the greener side of a hill. But see then when the bus come I seen what Daddy meant about things at night looking different, to look at it the bus some kind of miracle box of light trundling toward me with an offering of strangers and a lungful of air conditioning and a bell I could ring any time I wanted to, to make it stop, but I guess that’s not how no tough bitch would talk.
TUESDAY
I came home to my sister pounding on the sliding glass doors. Technically she didn’t live there anymore. Technically my dad had thrown her out the night before when she came home at midnight with eyes hard and fogged as marbles and the bitter smell of pot clouding out from her.
I felt bad for her. Her fists up above her head, pounding away. Her spiky black hair. Her shirt bunched up and her belly showing, Such lovely olive skin, our mom used to say, such lovely olive skin threaded with stretch marks and fat now, rippling and rippling like her belly button was the coin dropped in the water. I felt bad for her.
Let. Me. In. Behind her the sky was so blue it could’ve stained your finger. I turned the TV on.
At the commercials I realized she’d been quiet, and when I looked at her I saw her watching me like I’d been watching the TV. I just need my clothes, she said. I walked over to the door and pushed my forehead against it. Did you see the sky, I asked her. Of course, she said. I let her in.
Cunt, she said. In the kitchen she stuck her head in the freezer and sucked at a bottle of vodka. The cold air billowed white around her. Our mom had paid a man to paint angels in my sister’s bedroom. They floated in white air.
Want me to help you, I asked her.
Go fuck yourself, she said. Someone on TV started screaming. Here, she said, and handed me the empty bottle. Fill this up with water and put it back in the freezer.
I let the water run and run. I let it fill the bottle and cascade over my hands and fall down the drain. I imagined time slowing until it was nothing, until it dripped like water.
In the freezer I touched my wet finger to a piece of ice and it stuck and my finger got numb. I can endure pain, I wanted to tell her. Better than you.
Hey, she said, and when I turned she was holding our mom’s economy-sized bottle of Tylenol. She was chewing. White powder clung to her lips and shirt. Hey, remember when I pierced your ear and we used ice to numb it? She tipped her head back, poured more pills in. You bled like a motherfucker. She coughed and a pill flew out of her mouth and hit my shoulder. She picked it up and wiped it on my shirt. Popping it back in her mouth, she said, Come outside and sit with me.
We sat on the porch and stared at the yard. Her lips were chalked with Tylenol. Light this, she said, handing me a cigarette. Don’t inhale or you’ll turn evil. She blew smoke rings. Look, she said, halos. She said, you’re really annoying, you know that? Good grades and virginity don’t count for shit.
Her words were slurring. She held the cigarette up and missed her mouth.
I’m sending up a flare, she said. She pointed at the sky. You see that? I’m sending up a flare. Here I am. Here I am. Here I am.
Her head drooped, her chin touched her chest. Here I am, she said. You don’t even have to look to find me.
Evening was coming on. The sky turned pale and the sun was orange and smeared.
When Dad gets home, she said, make him count to ten before he looks for me. No, she said, make it twenty.
KID
Kid was reading his devotional. Then his father came in. His father dragged a chair behind him and it made an embarrassed, resentful sound across the wood floor. His father set the chair under the ceiling fan. Kid read the sentence, Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. He read it over and over. His father swiped at the fan’s blades with an old dirty rag. Kid read plans in a man’s heart plans in a man’s plans mans plan man, but he was really wondering what it would be like to fuck a girl in the guts, like right through the belly button. Kid’s father said, It makes me so proud to watch you reading your devotionals like that and Kid nodded, thinking girlguts bloodballs. Kid was pretty sure he was some kind of
sicko, but at this point he couldn’t help it. He made up for his thoughts by being lazy. Like right then he put down his devotional and went into the kitchen and melted some Velveeta over a row of Oreos instead of going down the road to Jenny Bickson’s house to see what her innards would feel like on his man place.
Kid’s father put on the television. A whole audience of women was screaming mad and Kid imagined their heads in loaf pans in the oven, slices of their doughy faces with butter and jam. On the couch his father had his hand down the front of his pants but Kid knew he was just feeling it, just letting his hand and his balls remember each other. His father put his hand on Kid’s head every once in a while in a pride sort of way and it always smelled sour. It always smelled like balls.
His father put his weight on his right leg, farted. His bra strap was hanging down his arm and Kid adjusted it for him as he walked past. Kid’s father had titties, said that’s what a lifetime of beer and chips did to a man, said a real man dealt with the situation at hand and didn’t let his titties flop around like a whore or a fat toddler.
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