“Yeah. Mrs. Ross.”
“Mrs. Ross, hmm. Well, you tell those other kids that if they ever bother you, they’ll have me to deal with. You hear?”
“Yeah.” I grinned back at him. “I will.”
“Okay.” He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and stomped his feet. Even in February, the temperature didn’t usually drop below freezing here, but there was a drizzle in the air today. “It’s cold,” Karl said, and I nodded. “How . . . how are things with your mom?”
“Okay, I guess. We’re living with Sherrie. Mom says she’s going to try to find Papa Dick and Grandma Jeanne again.”
“Mm. Yeah, that’d probably be good for her.”
“Yeah.” I hesitated. “So, um, do you . . . are you and Mom ever going to live together again? Because I kind of liked it better before. When you did, I mean.”
“I liked it too, Small Fry, I liked it too. It’s just . . . I don’t think your mom and I are the best match. I’m kind of like fire and she’s kind of like water, you know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh.” I pulled my hands into my cuffs and looked at the ground.
“Well. Maybe I could stop by here at lunch sometime and we could eat together. Over there on the grass or something. Would that be okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll just have to let my teacher know.”
“Of course, of course.” He smiled brightly at me. “Well, I should be going. Until then, all right?”
“Yup. Okay.”
Karl walked back to his truck and raised a hand to me, and I waved back.
After that, I couldn’t help but look over at the fence for him each day at lunchtime, but he never came again.
IF MOM WAS UPSET over the breakup, she didn’t let on. Karl had given her a bit of money, and even though it was surely running out, I never heard her mention looking for a job. Mostly she stayed up late with Sherrie, smoking joints and talking about men while I dozed at her feet in my sleeping bag. Mom said that her next boyfriend better be able to offer her more than just a charming smile and a hard dick, as she was sick of all the craziness that went down with guys the likes of Karl. As it turned out, it didn’t take her long to find someone she thought fit the bill.
One evening, about a month after we’d moved in with Sherrie, I sat beside Mom as she held a mirror to her face and put makeup on. “I have a surprise for you,” she said, smiling at me with hot-pink lips. “We’re going out for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, goody!” I clapped my hands excitedly, wondering how our luck had changed so quickly. Just yesterday, Mom had been wondering where she was going to find money for next week’s groceries. “Can I get a milk shake?”
“Of course, sweetheart.” She pulled me into her lap. “Do you remember that comic book I used to like, the one about Conan?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. I’ve finally met someone just like him. He’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of—sexy, manly, and he really knows how to treat a woman. He even has his own business. Things are going to change for us now, sweetie.”
“Change how?”
“Just . . .” She fluttered her hands in the air. “Barry’s really got it together, that’s all. You’re going to love him. He’s going to be here in a few minutes, and I want you to be on your best behavior. Okay?” I didn’t answer, so she poked me in the ribs and I started to giggle. “Okay?” she said again.
Just then, we heard a car honk outside. Mom took one last look in the mirror, then jumped up and walked me out the door.
My first thought when I saw Barry was that he looked like Luke from The Dukes of Hazzard. I had come across the show once at Mrs. Hofler’s house, just long enough to see him vaulting over the door into the driver’s seat of his topless car. Barry was sitting behind the wheel of a red El Ranchero, smoothing his mustache as he looked in the rearview mirror. It was early spring and the air was chilly, but he wore a sleeveless shirt that showed off his muscles.
“So,” he said to Mom when we slid into the car beside him. “This is your little bush baby.”
“Yes,” Mom replied, smiling down at me. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“She doesn’t look much like you,” Barry replied, starting the ignition. Then he peeled out of Sherrie’s driveway, leaving a trail of black screech marks behind us.
Barry did most of the talking at the restaurant. He sat back with his arm draped over Mom’s shoulder, squeezing her boob whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. He said “somewheres” instead of “somewhere.” And when the bill came, instead of getting his wallet out, he went out to the car and came back with a crate of empty beer cans to pay for dinner.
“Wow,” Mom said to me back in our bed at Sherrie’s place, her cheeks flushed. “Isn’t he just the best?”
I turned away from her, not sure what to say.
Four weeks later, we moved in with him.
BARRY LOVED TO TALK business. He owned the island’s only hardware store, and in the days after I first met him, he would sit on Sherrie’s couch using big, unfamiliar words like partnership, profit margin and accounting that never failed to make Mom’s face go all dreamy-looking. But when it came to talking about where he lived, Barry was more mysterious. One day, he and Mom seemed to get into a bit of a fight about it, and Barry finally told her he was living with his mother. But it was only for now, he added, because he was actually building his own house.
“There, are you happy?” he asked Mom angrily. “You’ve ruined the surprise. The house is almost done, and I was going to ask you to move in with me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, babe . . .” Mom said, stroking his arm. “I didn’t know—”
“Yeah, whatever,” Barry said, lighting a cigarette. “I guess you can come see if it meets your high standards.” He exhaled in a long, mad stream, and Mom said nothing.
A few days later, Barry drove Mom and me to see his house. The two of them had talked about it a little more since their tiff, and I had to admit it sounded pretty nice. Barry had described a view of the island, three bedrooms, a bathroom with a walk-in shower and a kitchen with brand-new appliances. Mom said it sounded just perfect. So when we turned onto the long, dusty road that wound up the hillside to the house, I wasn’t at all concerned about what we would see at the top.
“There’s just one more thing,” Barry said to Mom casually, stroking her thigh. “It’s not exactly finished, but I don’t want you to worry about that. You won’t believe how fast I’ll be able to make it all come together. Just a few more weeks of work to do, a couple months tops. Okay?”
Mom nodded and smiled back at him. The engine whined as we climbed the hill, and Barry pulled into a clear-cut driveway.
At first, I thought we had to be at the wrong place. I climbed out of the car, blinking uncertainly at the structure before us. It was nothing more than a plywood frame. Plastic sheeting flapped at the window openings, and there weren’t even any shingles on the roof. Barry lit a cigarette and led us through the cardboard front door. Inside was a single room with green tape on the floor to mark the walls, bundles of wires strung through two-by-fours and pink insulation stuffed here and there. There was no kitchen other than a refrigerator and hot plate, and no bathroom at all. “There’s a Porta-Potty out back. And running water and electricity. And a phone,” Barry said quickly when he saw Mom’s face. Then he waved his hand as if it were all just unfinished details.
“Don’t worry, babe, I’ll have it done in no time,” he said, and then he pulled Mom close and stuck his tongue in her ear.
Mom giggled and hugged him back, and our fate was sealed.
EVEN IF OUR HOME wasn’t perfect—after all, Mom and I were used to living in offbeat shelters—one thing seemed certain: Mom was happier than I’d seen her in a long time. She opened the cardboard door each day with a smile when I came home from school, and stuck to Barry like a shadow whenever he was around, especially at bedtime.
Bed. That was the worst part. My own mattress was just feet from theirs, which
meant I had to spend almost every night with my head under my pillow.
“Mom,” I said to her shyly one morning. “Um . . .”
“Yes, my love? What is it?”
“Um . . . it’s just a bit . . . loud. At night, I mean. I can’t really sleep . . .”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. But you know,” she added with a wink, “those are the sounds of a happy mama. You should be glad for me.”
“But I—”
“Cea!” She turned on me and grabbed my arm. I looked down at her hand in shock. “This is just how it is. Okay? How it needs to be. Come on. You’re my strong girl from the wilderness. You should know better than to complain about such things.” Her eyes held mine until I looked away. I was pretty sure of what she was trying to tell me: that no matter what the situation might be, we needed this man to survive. It was like Karl, only different.
“And besides,” she continued. “You have a mother who—”
“Loves me,” I finished for her. “And that’s more than a lot of kids in the world have.” It was a statement I had heard countless times in my life, but however true it might have been, it never made me feel any better.
And I still dreaded the nighttime.
BARRY HAD NEVER REALLY shown any interest in me, so I was surprised when he suddenly seemed to notice me on a day in early summer. I had been invited to a classmate’s costume party, and decided to wear a long pink nightgown and go as a princess. Mom made me a cardboard crown, draped some beads around my neck and curled my hair into ringlets.
“You need a little makeup,” she said, bringing her kit out from under her bed.
A few minutes later, I looked in the mirror and barely recognized myself. My lips were pink and my eyes were rimmed with blue liner. I looked much older than seven, and best of all I felt pretty.
Mom stepped outside and hollered for Barry, who was sitting on a stump smoking while he waited for us to get ready. He walked into the house and stopped abruptly when he saw me.
“Wow,” he said.
I smiled shyly, plucking at my sash.
“Doesn’t she look amazing? And look at this,” Mom said, holding up my hand to hers. She had even painted my fingernails. “We have the same hands. See that curved pinkie? That means she’s going to enjoy sex as much as I do one—”
“Mom!” I could feel my face turning red.
“What? It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, sweetheart. A palm reader told me that.”
I felt like crying. Mom was running around, gathering up her purse and jacket. I glanced over at Barry, and he winked at me.
“Ready?” Mom asked, pushing us out the door. “Let’s get going, we’re already late.” She hurried out to the car, and Barry and I followed.
I sat in the open back of the Ranchero with my crown in my lap and my hair whipping in the wind. All the way to the party, I could see Barry’s eyes flicking to mine in the rearview mirror.
BY EARLY JULY, BARRY’S house may have looked exactly the same, but his behavior toward me had changed completely. He talked to me at the dinner table, and even built me a tire swing on the hillside.
“We should go to the lake today,” he said to Mom and me one Saturday morning, and I ran to the cardboard box beside my mattress to get my swimsuit. Ever since school had ended a few weeks before, I had been dreaming of going to the place all my classmates talked about. The island’s biggest lake, though filled with green scum and giant leeches, was always packed on the weekends.
“What are you, afraid of leeches?” Barry asked me when we got there, lighting a cigarette behind his cupped hand. I was sitting on my towel with my arms wrapped around my knees, watching the other swimmers longingly.
“No. I can’t swim.”
“Can’t swim? What are you, seven now? We’ll have to fix that.”
I glanced at Mom, who was lying on her back reading her astrology book. Her skin glistened from the baby oil she had just had Barry apply. He had done it in long, slow strokes, which Mom had told me was a sign that their sex life was right on track. I wished she wouldn’t say that word in front of me when Barry was around. I felt his eyes on me and tugged self-consciously on my bikini bottom. Compared to Mom, I felt like a stick figure.
“Mom said I’d just learn one day. Just jump in and start floating, you know?”
Barry ground his cigarette butt into the sand and stood up. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll give you a lesson.” He held his hand out to me, and I tried not to look at his privates, which were right at my eye level. Barry’s swimsuit was shiny and tiny.
“Mom,” I said loudly. “We’re going into the water. Do you want to come?”
“No, sweetheart, I’m fine.” She lowered her book onto her chest and smiled happily. “But you two have fun, okay? I’m so glad to see you getting along so well.”
Barry turned out to be a pretty good teacher. By my fourth lesson, I could jump off the wharf by myself, tread water and kick my legs enough to make it back to shore. What Barry wanted to work on next, he said, were my strokes.
“Let’s do the breast stroke first,” Barry said as I stood shoulder-deep in the water.
I blushed a little at the word breast, but he didn’t seem to notice. Standing behind me, he held my wrists and pushed my arms back and forth. “Here, like this—” I glanced at the beach, searching for Mom. She was lying on her tummy, absorbed in her book. “And kick your legs at the same time. Okay?”
“Sure.” I nodded, wishing he would let go of me. I always felt a little squeamish when Barry touched me, and that wasn’t the only thing. Right now, I could feel something long and hard pushing against my lower back. “I think I got it,” I said.
“Good,” Barry replied, finally letting my arms drop. I waited for him to pull away, but instead he wrapped his arms around my waist under the water. “You’re a good girl, you know that?” he said quietly into my ear. “And a very pretty one too. Someday, you’re going to have a beautiful figure to go with that face.”
I could feel my cheeks turning red. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Barry’s nice words, it was just that they felt different from the ones Karl used to say to me. Karl’s had made my tummy feel kind of warm, while Barry’s made it feel kind of . . . sick.
ALTHOUGH MOM HAD SAID when she and Karl split up that she was planning on finding my grandparents, she hadn’t brought it up again since we’d moved in with Barry. I asked her about it one day, and she just flapped her hands at me and said she didn’t know where to begin. But I could see there was more to it than that.
By late fall, Barry was arriving home later and later from work and forgetting to kiss her when he did. For me, it was a trade-off. I hated that Mom was unhappy, but the quiet nights made it almost worth it. When my head wasn’t filled with the sounds of sex, I could think about other things. I wondered about my grandparents. I thought about my dad, who still wrote sometimes. I could read his letters on my own now, but they were always addressed to Mom and mostly went on about his boring job and his new wife. I scanned the pages quickly, looking for sentences with my name in them, then gave them back to Mom.
I felt alone. It had just been Mom and me lots of times before, but now it was different because even when she was right beside me, she felt a million miles away.
I LAY ON MY back, counting colored lights as Mom snored lightly across the room. Red, blue, green, yellow, red, blue, green, yellow. It was just before Christmas, and Mom had strung the lights around the house’s bare support beams. We were going to skip the Christmas tree this year, she said. “You’re eight now, right? Probably feeling too old for all that Santa stuff.”
I rolled over onto my side, hugging Suzie Doll into my chest. There was something about Mom’s words that made me mad, but it wasn’t the fact that she’d said I was too old. I knew that Barry had said no to a tree, and Mom always did what her boyfriends wanted, whether I liked it or not.
I heard the creak of mattress springs from Mom’s bed and held my breath, praying it wasn’
t Barry rolling on top of her. There was nothing in the world that I hated more than the sound of them having sex. Footsteps shuffled toward me, and I turned over to look.
Barry was standing beside my bed. He was naked, his wiener sticking out straight at my head like an arrow. His face glowed red in the lights. “I’ll buy you a present,” he whispered, taking my hand. “Anything you want.”
All it took was a few strokes, and it was over. The next day, I found her on my pillow when I came home from school: silky blond hair, strawberry red lips and chopstick legs, all wrapped up in a gauzy pink dress. Barbie.
I DON’T KNOW HOW long it went on, but it wasn’t more than a few months. Sometimes Barry wanted me to touch him, but other times he just wanted to stare at me. He would shine a flashlight up and down my naked body, and somehow that was even worse than the other stuff. Across the room, my mother slept. I wondered how she could not know, and if I even wanted her to.
One day, when Barry knew she was going to be out for a while, he had me get her makeup kit out and do my face. The eye shadow looked painted on and the lipstick looked lopsided, but Barry told me I was beautiful. In the end, that made it all worth it.
And then suddenly, it stopped. Barry and Mom started having sex again, and even though I would lie waiting afterward, he never came.
I woke up one night, gripped by the question of why Barry didn’t like me anymore, and I decided to find out. I walked over to Barry and Mom’s bed and stood looking down at them. I lifted the blanket and felt my way over Barry’s hip. My hand landed on Mom’s fingers.
I jerked back as if I’d been burned, Barry snorted, and Mom rolled over to face me.
“Watch it, Cea,” she said. “That’s my spot.”
SO SHE KNEW.
Day after day, I waited for her to bring it up, but she just kept on cooking and smiling and sweeping the plywood floor as if nothing had changed.
North of Normal- A memoir of my wilderness childhood, my unusual family, and how I survived both Page 18