Beauty of the Broken

by Tawni Waters

  I’m composing god-awful poems about heaven’s fruit too. “Your dad sounds so awesome,” I say. I slide my jeans down around my feet. My blue cotton underwear doesn’t match my bra, and looking at Xylia’s lean legs, I feel suddenly chunky. I cross my arms in front of me. A bird says something. Xylia and me are quiet for so long, my stomach starts to hurt. Xylia breaks the silence.

  “Holy shit, you have big knockers!”

  I cover my boobs, which are popping out over the top of my bra.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “That came out wrong. I mean, they’re pretty. I wouldn’t be ashamed of them if I were you.” She puts her arms out to the sides like she’s about to fly away. “Look at my chest,” she says. “I look like a boy. The guys at home called me the pirate’s dream.”

  “The pirate’s dream?” I ask, staring at the pink of her nipples showing through the flimsy lace of her bra.

  “Yeah, a sunken chest,” she says.

  We both laugh, standing side by side and sticking out our boobs.

  “I guess no matter what you have in the boobs department, you’ll always wish for something different,” I say.

  Xylia nods. “I guess so.”

  “Sometimes it stinks being a girl,” I say.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Xylia, and she starts toward the swimming hole. “Being a girl has its good points.”

  “Like what?” I ask, following.

  “Well,” she says, “you get to have babies for one thing.”

  “That’s a good thing? I’ve seen animals have babies, and it didn’t seem like too much fun if you ask me.”

  Xylia is quiet for a minute after that. “Yeah, but can you imagine having a little person grow inside you?” she says. “My cousin had a baby, and she said she never felt so close to anyone. She named her Sarah.”

  “Pretty name,” I say.

  “Yep,” Xylia says. “I’m going to name my baby something different though.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A name no one else has, like mine. Maybe Rapunzel. Delilah. Clementine.” She starts to sing “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine.” She has a voice so pretty, it cuts into your soul. When she says “you are lost and gone forever,” I almost break down right there, thinking about that poor old miner forty-niner finding his daughter blowing bubbles soft and fine.

  At the edge of the swimming hole, Xylia pulls out her hairpins, letting her hair fall around her shoulders like a shiny black cape. She’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen with the sunlight on her skin and her sleek curves showing through the red lace. I’m afraid she’ll see me staring, so I scream, “Watch out, rainbow trout! Here we come!” I make a mad dash for the jumping rock where me and Iggy always dive in.

  The cool water stings my skin as I plunge under, rushing up my nose. But I like the feeling. I can squint my eyes and see the rocks in the riverbed and the green, slimy plants swaying back and forth in the current. I’m almost sure I see a fish swim by. Xylia plunges in beside me. Together, we kick to the surface for air.

  “Henry!” Xylia yells. “Come on in. The water’s fine!” Me and Xylia turn away from the jumping rock, squeezing our eyes shut and licking the water from our lips, waiting to hear the sound of Henry’s feet slapping toward us. We don’t wait long.

  Before we have time to dive for cover, Henry comes bounding over the edge of the rock. I open my eyes just in time to see him careen over my head, flapping his arms and legs, wearing a look of terror. He lands feet first and sinks like a frying pan in dish water.

  “Henry?” Xylia calls out, staring at the ripples he left on the surface. “Can he swim?” she asks me after a minute.

  “Like a guppy,” I say, even though I don’t know if he can swim or not.

  “What’s taking him so long then?”

  I shrug. “Who knows? He’s probably petting a turtle under there or something.”

  “A turtle?” she repeats.

  I flip over on my back and bob around a little, paddling my feet just enough to stay afloat.

  “Sure,” I say. “That’s the way he is. Haven’t you heard him go on about animals?”

  Xylia swims toward the place where Henry disappeared and sticks her head under the water. I can see bubbles popping out behind her head, and I start thinking about Darlin’ Clementine. Bubbles are a sign of life, not death. Maybe the songwriters made a mistake. Maybe Clementine survived after all. Maybe her miner forty-niner father saw the bubbles and pulled her out and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. For a moment, when the songwriter passed by, she might’ve looked dead, but after he walked away, she could’ve coughed and sputtered out a mouthful of water. She could’ve been alive. Her daddy would’ve hugged her and made her up a pan of corn bread and beans to celebrate, and that would’ve been that. They all learned a lesson from her almost drowning, and from then on they fed the ducklings together, with life preservers nearby, just in case. I like my ending better.

  Xylia comes up for air. “Hasn’t he been under there too long?”

  I’m a little concerned, but I’m not quite ready to say it. “Would you stop your worrying? You sound like my momma. He’ll come up when he’s ready.”

  Which turns out to be right about then. Henry’s head breaks the surface of the water just in front of Xylia. She jumps at the shock, but then relief washes over her face.

  “I thought you drowned,” she scolds.

  “Hoped so anyway,” I mutter.

  “What?” asks Henry, clearing out his ears with his finger.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  We swim and swim. When there’s only one drop of energy left in us, we use it to scramble up the riverbank and stare at the setting sun. We don’t have what it takes to worry about our modesty anymore. Xylia quotes poetry, something about a sunset and a style and a dominee, as the sun sinks into the horizon.

  “What in the hell is a dominee?” I ask.

  She says she doesn’t know, but her dad used to always quote that verse to say good-bye to the day.

  “Speaking of fathers, I should go,” Henry says, and he stands. “My father expects me home before nightfall.”

  My father expects me home before nightfall too, but I don’t say anything. Soon Henry is gone, and it’s just me and Xylia lying by the river in our undies. I do something then, the bravest thing I have ever done. I reach out and grab her hand.

  “Xylia,” I say. The red in the sunset seems to get redder at the sound of her name.

  “Yeah?” she asks, squeezing my hand.

  “I gotta tell you something.”

  “What?” Xylia turns her head to look at me. I stare into her eyes, thinking I understand how much the Highwayman loved the landlord’s black-eyed daughter. I’d get shot to avenge Xylia any day of the week.

  “Xylia, I think I love you,” I whisper.

  She smiles. “Me too,” she whispers back. She kisses me again. Gently. Her lips taste like the river.

  It’s not like when I practiced kissing with my hand. I know just what to do. I know because my body tells me. My hands know how to run themselves through Xylia’s hair, thinking its wetness is the most beautiful thing in the world. My lips know how to pull away from her mouth and move along her neck, tasting the sweet softness of her skin. My eyes know when to close, so I can feel the cool sensation of her hands sweeping along my back, and when to open, so I can see her eyes burning with the same fire that is inside me. I know when to roll on top of her and look down, loving her more than I ever knew I could love anything. She gazes back up at me. Her lips are opened a little, as if they’re asking a question. “Do you really love me?” she seems to be saying, and I answer with a kiss, a kiss that is hard and full of all the longing I’ve felt since the first time I saw her. I break away and say it out loud again. “Xylia, I love you.”

  “Mara, I love you too.”

  I’m the luckiest girl alive. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to melt into Xylia and become one person. I want to spen
d the rest of my life touching her, tasting her, smelling her.

  We kiss and kiss, so long and hard that we don’t hear the bushes rustling. We don’t notice Elijah Winchell, his eyes burning with that ugly fire, until a light flashes in our faces.

  I open my eyes, and Elijah is standing over us with his cell phone. A bomb goes off inside my head. I cover my boobs and roll away from Xylia. He turns the phone so I can see the picture he took of me and Xylia, half naked, making out.

  It’s like Elijah reads my mind. “Fucking abominations.”

  “Don’t tell. Elijah, please,” I say, wanting to cry, imagining what my daddy will do if he finds out.

  “You fucking slutty dykes,” he says. Panic takes hold of me.

  I sit up and grab for his legs. He jumps back.

  “Give me the phone!” I scream. I remember the day Daddy broke Iggy’s brain. I remember Momma’s shattered jaw. I imagine my face being on the receiving end of a two-by-four. “Please, Elijah!”

  Elijah laughs. I jump to my feet and lunge for the phone, but he holds it over his head, just out of my grasp.

  “What will you give me?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “In exchange for the phone, what will you give me?”

  “I don’t know.” I start to cry. “What do you want? I don’t have any money.”

  “Mara,” Xylia says behind me, “let him go. Who cares what he thinks?”

  “My daddy,” I yell. “My daddy cares. My daddy will kill me, Xylia. For real. You don’t understand.”

  “Show me your tits,” Elijah says.

  I look at him, astonished, thinking he must be joking. He’s not joking. “Take off your bra,” he orders.

  Suddenly Xylia is beside me. “Screw that, you fucking piece of shit. Tell whoever you want. Mara Stonebrook and I love each other. Who cares?”

  “Oh, I’ll tell,” Elijah promises. “I’ll tell the whole fucking world.”

  He turns and walks into the woods.

  “Elijah, wait!” I scramble after him.

  Xylia grabs my arm. “Let him go, baby,” she whispers. Baby. She called me baby. She pulls me to her and wraps her arms around me. “I’ve got you.”

  Elijah trips away through the woods. Burying my face in her cool hair, I cry and cry and cry.

  CHAPTER 19

  FOR WEEKS AFTER ELIJAH TAKES the picture, I can’t sleep. I wait up all night, expecting that any minute Daddy will walk through my door and kill me for being an abomination. But Elijah must not have kept his promise, because nothing happens. No one even looks at me funny in church.

  I go to Xylia’s one day, and we lie in her bed with our arms around one another, talking about the picture, wondering why we have not yet been murdered. Her room smells the way it always does. Like her. Like flowers. Also, there’s something else. The smell of her momma baking the hippie bread she eats. It has raisins in it, but it still tastes like shit.

  “Elijah’s probably using the picture to masturbate,” Xylia says angrily.

  “Sick,” I say.

  “Sick is right,” she says. “He’s a sick, twisted, little bastard. Someday that kid’s gonna hurt someone.”

  It’s weird for me to hear that someone else thinks of Elijah Winchell that way. “I get so confused,” I tell Xylia, touching the freckle under her eye, the one that I love. “People say you and me are evil, but what I feel for you is . . .”

  “Holy?” she asks, breathing deeply. She always tells me she loves the way I smell. She says I smell like sunshine.

  “Yeah, that,” I say. “Our love is like the purest thing I’ve ever known.”

  “Me too,” she says, and she kisses me soft.

  When she pulls away, I say, “People like my momma say Elijah is holy, but he’s so full of hate. So mean. He hurts people all the time, but he quotes the Bible, so it’s okay?”

  Xylia closes her eyes, the way she does when she’s thinking hard. “My dad always told me the only people I have to be afraid of in this world are people who think they’re right. Not blacks. Not whites. Not Muslims. Not Christians. Just people who think they have it all figured out, and everyone who thinks differently than they do is wrong. My dad says there’s a fine line between zealotry and murder.”

  I think about this, wishing I had a daddy like Xylia’s. “My daddy says people like us should be stoned in the streets.” My voice shakes a little when I say it.

  Xylia pulls me closer. “Anyone touches you, I’ll kill ’em,” she says. We lie there like that for a long time. I try to memorize the moment, the sound of the ceiling fan buzzing overhead, the sunlight glinting off Xylia’s hair, the smell of her momma’s awful bread. I’m so busy memorizing, I don’t notice Juliette come into the room.

  She clears her throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  I sit up, my heart pounding, but Xylia doesn’t move.

  “I just wanted to know if you’d like some cider and cheese.” Juliette looks embarrassed, but not mad.

  “You want some?” Xylia asks me.

  “Um, sure,” I say, still stunned that Juliette found us holding each other and did nothing but offer us a snack.

  When Juliette leaves the room, Xylia reaches up to touch my face. “You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. You know that, right?”

  “Holy shit! Your mom scared me.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Because if my mom found us like this, she’d tell my dad, and then—”

  Xylia laughs.

  “No, Xylia,” I say. “He really might kill us. You don’t know what I’ve seen him do. He hates gay people, and he tries to kill people he hates.”

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to run away to Mexico sooner than we thought.”

  I ponder really and truly leaving this town behind, leaving Iggy behind. He’s got his job now, and even a couple of people from the store who he calls friends. He helps pay Momma and Daddy for groceries, and sometimes he buys me things. Little things. Dolls. Stuffed animals. Lollipops. Things I’m way too old for. But I love them. They’re pieces of his heart.

  Now that Iggy’s not in the house so much, Daddy doesn’t get mad at him as often as he used to, but still, Iggy wouldn’t last a week without me. There’s no way I can leave him here. I’m about to tell Xylia this when she pulls me down onto the bed beside her. “Come back here.” She kisses me hard on the mouth.

  When she pulls away, she takes the Virgin of Guadalupe ring from her finger and slides it onto mine. “I want you to have it.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask. “It’s your favorite.”

  “You’re my favorite.”

  Warmth floods me. I feel more loved than ever before. Precious. Tenderly I touch the Virgin, who smiles softly at me. “Thank you. No one has ever given me anything this beautiful.” The ring could be a painting of Xylia. They are both lovely and holy. “I wish I could give you something back, but I don’t wear jewelry.”

  “You’ve already given me more than anyone ever has.”

  Xylia’s momma returns carrying two glasses of cider. She pauses for a moment, as if she is trying to decide what to do. Then she presses the glasses into our hands and walks out of the room, looking worried.

  Xylia doesn’t seem to notice. She rumples my hair and says, “I love your crazy hair, kid. It’s perfect.”

  “Kid?” I ask.

  “Yep. Did you forget that your girlfriend is an older woman?”

  My girlfriend. Xylia is my girlfriend. I’m so happy, I want to scream.

  Later, long after I have gone home, Xylia calls me, crying. She says her momma asked her about our relationship.

  I freak, glad we only have one phone so Daddy can’t be listening on the other end. “You told her?”

  “Half of her friends in San Francisco were lesbians. She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but she’s worried.”

  “Why?” I ask. Dumbest question ever.

  “She says this town is stuck in the Stone Age, and if
they find out, they’ll hurt us. She says if she needs to, she’ll send me back to San Francisco to live with Dad.”

  My chest hurts. “Then we can never, ever let anyone find out,” I say. “You can’t leave me here alone.”

  If I believed in things like jinxing, I would believe that Xylia’s momma jinxed us with her worrying. The next morning I wake up to the sound of Daddy screaming.

  “Little fucker!”

  I run downstairs in my pajamas. The front door is wide open. Daddy’s outside staring at the wall. Someone’s written “DYKE” on it in red spray paint. When I say someone, I mean Elijah. Who else would it be?

  I’m terrified that Daddy might know the message is for me, but Daddy doesn’t seem to realize the graffiti has any basis in reality. “I’m gonna find out who did this and make him clean it off with his tongue!” he shouts. He calls the police, and Sheriff Perkins shows up a half hour later. Daddy goes out to his car, and I run up to my room and open the window. Their conversation drifts up to me.

  “Yours wasn’t the only house that was hit,” Sheriff Perkins says. “Those new folks. What were their names? The Browns. Someone tagged their house too.”

  “Little fuckers,” Daddy says. “Do you think there’s a gang in town?”

  “Could be,” Sheriff Perkins answers. “A lot of Mexicans have moved in recently.”

  “Fucking wetbacks,” Daddy says.

  I’ve never been so happy to hear a racist comment in my life. No one seems to suspect this might have anything to do with me and Xylia loving each other. As soon as Sheriff Perkins leaves, I throw on jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Where you going?” Daddy asks as I walk to the door.

  “To the river,” I say. I’m not lying. Xylia and me planned to meet by the river today at ten o’clock. I’m supposed to bring a picnic, but under the circumstances, I’m not.

  “All right,” Daddy says. “Just be back before dark. Looks like there are some oxygen thieves running around.” “Oxygen thieves” is Daddy’s favorite term for people who don’t deserve to live.