Fingerprints of You

by Kristen-Paige Madonia

  “I look bloated is what I look.” I eyed myself in the mirror in front of us, the silver fabric stretched tight over my curves. “Like a sausage in sequins,” I said.

  “Please. It’s just a little belly pooch. If I didn’t know what you normally looked like, I wouldn’t even notice.” She tugged the hairbrush gently. “You look hot,” she repeated, and she parted my hair down the middle before twisting each half into a tight little bun at the base of my neck. “The only place you’re showing is your boobs and that teeny tiny belly bump. It’s beautiful, really,” she said, and our eyes met in the reflection. She smiled. “I like running away with you, Lemon Raine. You know that?” but then the phone rang, and the moment was lost as I thought of Emmy’s dad, instantly thought of bad news, of her mom calling to tell us something loud and crashing.

  And I guessed Emmy was thinking the same thing, because she dropped the hairbrush on the floor and scrambled to find the phone.

  She sighed and said, “Thank God, it’s Dylan,” when she grabbed it from under the bed and flipped open the cell. She sank to the floor, smiling when she heard his voice on the other end. “Happy New Year’s, baby,” she said as she pulled her legs in crisscrossed. She began twirling her hair with her fingers, as if he could see her in her underwear and tank top all the way from West Virginia.

  I looked at the clock and realized it was after midnight where Dylan was. It was New Year’s for Stella and Simon three time zones ahead, too. I slipped into the bathroom to do my makeup and found Emmy’s gold eye shadow in her toiletry bag. I carefully swept it across my lids and decided to be brave and wear the tube top and black mini stretch skirt. I told myself she was right, that I looked good with flushed cheeks and dewy skin, with full perky breasts I never had before the pregnancy. It wasn’t so bad once I had on some makeup and black knee-high boots. I checked my nose ring, put matching silver studs into my ears, and vowed to learn from Emmy, to practice her self-confidence and steal from her the traits I wanted for myself.

  From the other room I heard Emmy whispering before she broke into laughter, and I felt good about being in California and about meeting Aiden later at the concert. Last year’s New Year’s was a disaster, an evening that ended with Stella on her knees puking in the hall bathroom, the splash of liquid on liquid as I held her hair back and looked away.

  Molly-Warner had watched us from the doorway, said, “Smells like pineapple,” and rolled her eyes.

  But I knew it was pomegranate martinis, Stella’s drink of choice that winter, and I also knew the man in the living room in the sports coat was an insurance salesman my mother met when he went to J.C. Penney to buy a pair of earrings for his wife for Christmas. Stella helped him pick them out during her shift: white-gold dangles that shimmered from Stella’s ears when her head jerked forward as she vomited again.

  “I’m sorry,” Stella mumbled between heaves. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said, and I realized she’d begun to cry.

  I’d never seen her that drunk before, and I’d wondered if she’d remember it in the morning, or if all that booze flooding her body would wash out her memories during the night and she’d wake up guilt free. I wondered if she’d be embarrassed or if the hours of sleep would rinse away the humility.

  “How can a woman that small be filled with so much stuff?” Molly-Warner said and headed for the kitchen as I used my fingers to pull Stella’s hair tighter.

  I could tell she was sleeping then by the weight of her head, the final spew having kicked her out of consciousness. It was the month of Pine-Needle Green, and she was spilling out of a jade-colored minidress that hugged her curves, while Molly-Warner stood at the counter eating chips and salsa, and the married man sat on the couch in the living room looking nervous. I caught him watching me.

  “Go,” I mouthed, and he did, shutting the door carefully behind him.

  And then I plucked the earring from Stella’s left earlobe and watched it hit the water, bobbing in the filmy bile before I moved her to the floor and left her slumped and sleeping against the bathroom wall. I flushed.

  As I looked at myself in the mirror in San Francisco, a million miles from Stella, I knew this New Year’s would be nothing like last year’s.

  The Regency Center, a massive rectangular building set on the corner of Van Ness and Sutter, was lit up and glowing when we parked in front in the taxi and dug in our coat pockets to pay the driver. The first floor was made of oatmeal-colored stone, and we looked up at the rows of huge arched windows and white crown molding, all bright and shining gold. The eaves atop the building were intricately sculpted into complicated shapes and designs.

  “This is amazing,” I said as we got out of the taxi and joined the line of people stretched around the corner and down the street.

  Most of the crowd was masked or winged or adorned with sequined pants, furry leg warmers, feathered headbands, or intricate jewelry. People poured out of cabs, and we found ourselves in line behind a tall woman in white leather pants and a blue tank leotard. A sparkly scene of jellyfish and seaweed had been stenciled on her arms and chest, and small plastic octopuses and glittering sea creatures were scattered throughout her hair, a teased nest of long blond curls. I heard her say she was freezing, and the man standing next to her offered the feather boa wrapped around his neck.

  “Now, she’s got great boobs,” Emmy whispered, and she slid her hand into mine and squeezed, sensing my insecurity, maybe, sensing my hesitation.

  One girl had tied red balloons to the ends of her pigtails, the helium pulling her hair into the air as if her head might float away. Another dressed as a flamingo in a bright cotton-candy-colored miniskirt with black fishnet tights underneath. Her hair was dreadlocked into short tubes and spray painted Pepto-Bismol pink with black stripes, her stomach bare and muscular and camouflaged under paint designed to look like feathers. Men wore dresses or cowboy chaps and leather boots, furry vests and sunglasses in the shapes of fish, belts that worked as bottle openers and bright blue sweatbands around their heads. Camera flashes sparked and people yelled, and I smelled pot and booze and cherry-flavored lip gloss, sweat and cigarettes and spray paint. I couldn’t imagine how Stella had left this city behind.

  We waited for almost an hour on the sidewalk, and I was pretty certain it’d be midnight before we even got inside, but then Aiden showed up out of nowhere and smiled as if he’d been searching for us all along.

  “You shouldn’t be in this line,” he said, his mouth like a smokestack as his breath turned white in the cold. “Come on,” and then he took my hand, and I took Emmy’s hand, and she handed the joint back to the girl in the leather pants and the boa, and Aiden led us around the corner to the front, where he nodded to a woman with a clipboard. She smiled and moved out of the way so we could pass between two black poles that had been marked off by a sign reading VIP.

  Once we were inside, Aiden led us up a set of stairs, where we checked our coats. He leaned in and whispered something about me looking perfect when I straightened out my sequins and checked my hair in a mirror at the top of the stairs. Emmy wore tight red bell-bottoms and a lacy black tank top, and she told Aiden he looked “very Jim Morrison” in snug dark jeans and a white tee. Someone had rubbed silver glitter into his hair, and he had huge star-shaped sunglasses pushed back on top of his head, holding his bangs out of his eyes. He produced two matching pairs from who knows where, one red and one gold.

  “For you,” he said as he slid the red pair onto my face and kissed me on the cheek. “And for you,” he said to Emmy, repeating the gesture.

  I eyed him and felt the bewilderment that comes in the early stage of a relationship when everything the other person does seems significant and extraordinary.

  Under the glasses the room seemed more manageable, the lights dimmer and the disco balls less intense as he took my hand and maneuvered us back down the stairs to the front hall, where the heat of the crowd went straight to my head. The walls looked like they’d been frosted with vanilla icing, a
nd I studied the intricate door frames, the sconces that helped light the room, and the massive gold chandeliers that made me feel small. From the foyer, the noise of the mob echoed off the walls and bounced inside my head. Above us a disco ball hung in the center of the ceiling, and I looked down and realized my tube top was throwing rainbows across the walls.

  “There’s a DJ playing in the ballroom on this level, and some kind of fire-dancing troupe through those doors,” Aiden said, nodding down the hall. “The bar closes at two, Emmy, but it’ll reopen at six a.m.,” he said, and I realized Aiden had no idea how old we were. “The late-night show is a techno theater thing with painters and belly dancing, but the band you want to see, my friend’s band, just started. They’re playing in the Lodge on the third floor, up those.” He pointed to a marble spiral staircase on the opposite side of the room. “It’s a little confusing, but you’ll figure it out,” he said, and then he told us he was going to get some drinks and check backstage. “I’ll meet you upstairs once I make sure everything’s set for the countdown. The band wants sparklers and fire sticks.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes, and then he was gone, melting into the crowd so quickly I almost wondered if we’d imagined him.

  “Good God, is it me, or is there something so supersexy about that kid?” Emmy pulled a tube of lip gloss out from her bra and swiped it across her mouth. “You would never find a boy like that in West Virginia.” She handed me the makeup. “Onward,” she said after I’d applied the gooey red gloss and she’d stashed it back between her breasts. She took my hand to lead me toward the stairs.

  THE BAND AIDEN WANTED US TO SEE was playing in a long room with crimson walls and blood-colored carpet, dark wood ceiling beams and teardrop-shaped chandeliers.

  “Now, this is what I’m talking about,” Emmy said. “High class.”

  The stage was decorated with giant papier-mâché conch shells and blue and silver foil streamers that glowed under black lights. Near the bar at the entrance, a topless woman dressed as a mermaid sat inside a large glass bubble resting on a small makeshift stand about three feet high. Her black hair was tied up with white and blue and green ribbons, and her breasts were dusted with silver and gold glitter. We stood at the foot of her glass globe and stared at her as she mimed combing her hair and doing her makeup.

  “Does everyone in this city have amazing ta-tas?” Emmy asked. “Talk about claustrophobic,” she said. “How does she breathe in there?”

  I looked at the mermaid’s silver-dollar nipples and the blue scaly skirt that had been cut into the shape of a fin, the thick silver paint swirled across her skin. “She looks sad,” I said. “And trapped.”

  She stood up, stretched her arms above her head, eyes wide, lips slack and slightly parted. The drone and buzz of Aiden’s friends echoed inside the vaulted ceiling and seeped into electronic jams intensified by drum solos and bass riffs while I adjusted to the room.

  “Which one of those boys you think wants to buy me tequila?” Emmy said, and then she sauntered to the bar.

  The mermaid moved to the front of the globe, where she pressed her hands against the wall, looking out at me and at all the motion and chaos in the room that she couldn’t get to, and I thought of Stella. I figured that was how having a baby in San Francisco would have been for her: a tease and a trap. She’d be surrounded by the energy of the city, but she’d be fenced in by a child she wasn’t sure she wanted, stifled and tied down in a place that should have been full of possibilities, and I thought maybe that was why she left. The limits and sacrifices of motherhood would have been exaggerated in San Francisco, and the life she gave up would be easier to forget if she placed all those miles between her and Ryan.

  Three shots of Jose Cuervo later, Emmy made her way with me toward the stage, where Aiden stood next to a skinny long-legged girl in white ankle boots and fishnets, a black leather bathing suit with a low-cut V in the front, and a gold belt cinched around her waist. They clutched cocktails in small plastic cups, and Aiden bobbed his head to the music while she swayed and smiled at the boys onstage. I slipped in next to Aiden discreetly, but the tequila must have been moving fast, because Emmy came up behind him and grabbed his ass.

  “Hola, amigo,” she said. “So these are your friends? Not bad.” She eyed the four members onstage dressed in matching yellow jumpsuits and red helmets, with dark sunglasses masking their eyes. They were construction workers or firefighters, maybe, musicians zipped into costumes that made me think of sci-fi books.

  Aiden introduced us to his sister Sophia, the girl in the boots and the bathing suit, who was visiting from Seattle.

  “She’s in the middle of a divorce,” he whispered. She looked like she couldn’t have been older than nineteen. “She couldn’t stand to stay in Washington for New Year’s,” he told me, and I couldn’t imagine being so young and married, let alone divorced, but then I remembered I was seventeen and pregnant, the setting mixing it all up in my mind.

  Aiden got another round of drinks for them and a bottle of water for me, and we danced for a while down front, a crowded space of all ages, the noise of the speakers filling my head and shifting my body to the beats of the music. Aiden had his arm around my waist by then, and next to him Sophia swayed her hips in tiny figure-eights in front of a rock-star-looking black guy with dreadlocks to his shoulders, and everything felt right in that crowded room with red walls.

  But when the band started gearing up for the countdown, Emmy slid in next to me and said, “I know I’m sloshed, but is it me or is that your dad’s lady friend over there in a bug suit?”

  Emmy had spotted Cassie, who was with Ryan on the other side of the stage, in front of the keyboardist. Cassie was wearing wings, and her afro was tied into a hundred little braids spiked out from her head. Ryan was shirtless under a fringed leather vest and was wearing an Indian headdress that framed his face with red and brown and white feathers. He was sweating and dancing, and Cassie was glowing beside him as she bounced to the music. They looked happy, happy like Stella on the porch with Simon drinking vodka at sunset. The drummer was counting down to midnight, but I didn’t hear much, because the room started spinning under all those strobe lights and spotlights and the fog machine, the darkness moving in again. Next thing I knew I was slumped against the wall by the stage, with Aiden squatting over me, rubbing my cheek with his thumb as I sat straddled between his knees.

  He pushed a strand of hair from my face and said, “It’s good to have you back,” and next to him Emmy nodded and tried to catch her balance, swaying. He told her, “I’m going for more water,” before he disappeared into the crowd.

  “I’m so humiliated,” I said, and remembered losing my balance and grabbing Aiden’s arm as the silver and black spots filled my eyes and wiped out all the lights.

  Emmy said I blacked out supersudden and hard, which she thought was very hip of me, since half the crowd was on drugs, and in a way, fainting made me blend in a little better. “Well played,” she said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I told her when she sat down on the carpet beside me and closed her eyes.

  “I’m drunk,” she said.

  I nodded. Next to us, onstage, the band began a patterned song that looped inside the same ten beats of music. My head throbbed in tiny pulses, pounding, and I became acutely aware of how absurd it was to be at a music festival pregnant and sober in some club full of hippies and hipsters and adults who partied like kids, kids costumed as adults.

  “I don’t belong here,” I said to Emmy. “Not now and not ever, with this whole motherhood thing trailing me.”

  “Chin up, Lemon Raine,” she said, but her voice was muddled as it stumbled out of her mouth.

  The whole thing made me sad as a headache moved in behind my temples and settled there with fierceness. Next to me Emmy leaned her head against the wall and breathed heavily, the smell of booze puffing out of her with every exhale.

  “You can have Aiden, by the way,” she said. “Tonight Dylan told me he lov
ed me.” She smiled. “I kind of believe him, you know?”

  I was glad she had something good to go back to when she left San Francisco at the end of the week.

  “Did they see me?” I asked, thinking of Ryan and Cassie dancing by the stage before my vision faded. I wasn’t sure what I wanted—for them to have noticed me or not have noticed me.

  “I don’t know. I was a little distracted when your knees buckled and your face turned all white and pasty,” Emmy said. “You’re a drama queen, you know that?”

  “And you’re a drunk,” I said back.

  “Agreed,” she said. “But it’s temporary, I promise.” She looked me over. “Are you okay? I mean, I’ve never seen anyone faint like that,” she said.

  “I’m just tired, I guess. I probably should be eating better. And getting more rest.”

  Across the room a computer was hooked up to a projector and was casting screen-saver images above Emmy’s head, her hair shifting from the light, swirls of pink and yellow and blue that brought back the nausea. “Want to make a beeline for the door before your hipster honey comes back?” Emmy asked, and I agreed, so she helped me off the floor and led us past the bar and the mermaid and down the stairs into the front foyer.

  “Coats,” I said, remembering our jackets we’d checked upstairs.

  “I’m on it,” she said, and I waited while she went to get them.

  And we almost made it out, but then I turned and saw Cassie coming from the bathroom door in the hallway. She adjusted her tight yellow miniskirt and straightened out her black tube top just before she looked up and our eyes met from more than ten feet away. By the time she was next to me I realized she was dressed as a bumblebee with two yellow antennas glued to the top of a headband resting between the braids.

  “Hey there,” she said, and then, “You’re here? I mean, I didn’t expect you to be . . . here,” she stammered. Her eyelashes sparkled with silver dust, and with her legs stretched long and thin under the miniskirt and black fishnets, she reminded me of a peacock, of an ornate and brilliant bird. I tried to imagine what this dark-eyed woman could possibly be doing with a loser like Ryan, a stoner and a deadbeat dad. “You’re not alone, are you?” she asked.