Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  In the driver’s seat, I pull the top down. Harley has taught me enough about driving to get us around, though she still has to help me with directions sometimes. There’s no greater thrill than taking I-95 in my father’s car, speeding, hoping for the scream of sirens.

  Before I pull out of the horseshoe driveway, another car pulls in behind us. A black, cubic car. Spinning rims of chrome on the tires—tinted windows.

  A man in a gray suit gets out of the car and begins walking toward us. He walks with a slight limp. I recognize him immediately, from years ago; he was in my living room with Cousin Cindy. She always called him Boca Brad, the richest dealer in the south. Nelle is sitting behind me in the car and lowers her sunglasses down her nose.

  What’s up, hot stuff?

  Don’t, I say.

  Boca Brad smacks his gum between his teeth. His cologne carries on the humidity and nips in my throat. He bends down to see Nelle a little bit closer.

  Here to see her mom, he says, pointing at me. But maybe I’m really here to see you.

  He reaches out his hand and cups her under the chin, his fingers digging into her cheeks. I have seen men touch Nelle for all the months I have known her, and I will see them do it again, and again, in the months after this moment, but I have never seen Nelle truly scared or frightened of anything like she is right now, still as an animal in crosshairs, like she’s just seen something too grown-up for us to understand yet. Was it his smell? The dig of his nails? The way he held her gaze? Later, she’ll tell me she couldn’t be sure, but there was something, she said, that kind of woman-intuition one hears about. It came ringing in.

  Drive, she says, swatting the man’s hand away.

  My father is flying my mother up to New York for a visit.

  I begged him on the phone—Daddy, she needs you. She needs this. She needs help. I want my mother back, I want her grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and her watercolor paints and her half-remembered, half-imagined stories. I want the smell of her, like gardenias. I want everything about her. I want her to live. But I also know that sobriety will mean I’ll have to go to school again; I’ll have to give the credit cards back. I’ll have to stay home and put my dishes away, and I won’t get to drive my father’s car. I won’t wake up under a highway overpass anymore, or beside a motel pool, or on the beach with horseshoe crab shells in my hair and men I don’t know. Most of all, I know if I have a mother, I can’t keep the girls.

  We are curled up in Harley’s bed like cats when I get the call.

  She’s leaving, I say. My dad says she’s going to New York.

  How long?

  Who ever knows, I shrug.

  What should we do with your crib to ourselves? Harley wants to know.

  We could throw a party, I say.

  A themed party? Nelle asks. Please, I love themes! I slay at themes!

  It takes us three hours to drive to the Aventura Mall and find the perfect sets of coordinating lingerie. In Hollywood, we pick up handcuffs, whips, paddles, and various colors and sizes of dildos. We drive to my house and get dressed. Harley is playing the role of Jenna Jameson tonight, a cloud of blonde wig, a white-and-blue garter belt, silver glitter, like an angel. Nelle is playing Briana Banks, with a black lace-up corset and smolder eyes. I’m playing the only Asian porn star we know, Kobe Tai. I wear fishnets, a lavender bustier, and several sets of handcuffs attached to my garter belt. Because Harley and Nelle have tits and I do not, the girls help me triple up bras beneath my bustier, pulling my skin up and over it. We paste on thick rows of eyelashes, and press on several inches of acrylic nails. We decorate my house with the dildos. We suction them onto the pool table, the mantelpiece; we leave the small ones on the bar to be used as drink stirrers.

  By nine P.M., almost a hundred people arrive at our Porn Star Party. Public and private school kids, a couple dealers we know, the older boyfriends of girls in my grade. Clarissa shows up in a white-and-pink number, and Nelle calls her a troll, tells her to leave me alone. Beth shows up fully clothed, What are you, a pilgrim? before Harley convinces her to change in my room. Several Ron Jeremys appear shirtless, with plungers—Got a leak?—and other girls arrive in thongs, nipple tassels, capes, and extra-padded push-ups.

  Harley, Nelle, and I take every shot we’re given. Red Bull and Jägermeister, Lemon Drops, Cocksucking Cowboys with cream. We lie down on my pool table and begin to kiss one another while the boys and men cheer us on.

  Cousin Cindy once asked me, What do you think love really is?

  I think it’s being able to kiss someone whenever you want, I said.

  I can kiss Nelle whenever I want. And I do.

  The other girls at the party roll their eyes, move to the corners of the room—Sluts, they say. A few of the boys kick off their Air Force 1s and stand on top of the pool table. They begin Crip Walking around our bodies, a dance some of them like to do when the hip-hop hits come on. Tonight, Nelle is wearing her door-knocker tongue ring—my favorite—a heavy hoop of metal that I lift with my tongue. The music gets louder before it turns off.

  Somebody’s ringing. Somebody’s here.

  Go get it, Kinky Chinky.

  When I open the door, two cops seesaw their flashlights in my eyes.

  Party? they ask.

  What’s it to you? My vision bloats their bodies. I try to snap into focus.

  You look pretty young, young lady, says one of the cop-heads. Interested, I think.

  If you think you’re going to arrest me, I say, I’m going to have to arrest you first. I take the handcuffs off my garter belt and move toward them, trying to clink the metal rings around one of their wrists. The cops back up. I fall on the pavement and my knee begins to bleed through my fishnets. Look what you did to my outfit, I say.

  Rather than evict anyone from the party, the cops declare a lockdown. This means they check all the exits, move us to the center of the room, and take a head count. They write down names and schools. They want us all to call our parents and explain what we’ve done, but we’re all slurring, laughing, calling Pizza Hut delivery instead. They call my parents—We’ve got about a hundred kids here in their underwear—before shaking their heads, Well you better fly back from New York because we need a guardian.

  I’ve got a guardian, I say, twisting a strand of bubble gum around my nail. I call my Aunt Trista, Uncle Kai’s wife, who’s new to the family, in the neighborhood.

  I’m in a jam, Auntie Trista.

  Fifteen minutes later, Aunt Trista comes dressed for the theme. A black glittering corset. A leather miniskirt with two slits up the thighs.

  I’m the guardian angel, she says, shooing the cops out the door. When she locks it behind them, she turns to the rest of us, sitting in a circle like we’re playing Duck Duck Goose.

  Now, she says, who wants to get your guardian a goddamn drink?

  They left.

  Harley moved to New York that spring to make it in acting, to find the right light for her face. She gave herself a show name, and we spoke on the phone a couple of times a year until we didn’t. I wish I could say our good-bye was difficult, but something inside me, that gnarled knot of ass-wiping girl-love, was relieved. These days, I watch her on a television drama in which she plays the lifesaving teacher inspiring inner-city students to read books and dream big. She’s a stranger now, a married woman—older, slighter, that upward gaze.

  Nelle was picked up in the middle of the night by a Catholic couple in matching blue polo shirts. Her mother waited in a neighbor’s apartment while they took her daughter, kicking and squalling. The couple handcuffed Nelle in her pajamas and carried her into a PT Cruiser, drove her to live in a reform school for girls in rural North Carolina. Nelle would find a job in a ski lodge up there in the mountains and meet a gang of cowboys to buy her cigarettes, send and receive her letters.

  This is what she tells me now, anyway. We never wrote to each other.

  I got my driver’s license that summer. I was left with my mother, with those piles
and piles of clothes, the empty wrappers of horse pills. Left with a dull hammering at my temples when I ran out of cigarettes and didn’t know how to get them. At night, I drove along Deerfield Beach and waited for that fullness in my ears, those voices deep and melodic as a gospel as we crawled through the streets of Miami looking for somebody, anybody—I love you. I love you. I love you, too—alone in my father’s convertible.

  He bought me a new car—fancier—the month before he died. I want the old one back.

  Dear Tribes of Fatherless Girls: I’m still here.

  HOW TO SURVIVE IN BOCA RATON

  Some days, in the corner of the school cafeteria, Calorie Valerie feeds dollar bills into the vending machine. She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is looking, then packs each crinkling bag of chips, each box of cookies, neatly into her backpack. She pushes each package down like she’s trying to drown it, fits more than what seems possible into her little pink bag. Nobody pays attention to druggie freak Valerie anymore, except for me. I watch dollar after dollar after dollar after dollar.

  THE GREETER

  They call me The Greeter. I sell shoes at the Boca Raton Town Center mall—bedazzled stilettos and platforms, neon-strapped pumps saved for special occasions. I stand by the entrance of the store, heels dug into the carpet, tummy tucked in, and I greet people. Hi, How are you, sunshine? Have you seen our shoes today? I wear sparkling eyeshadow for the job. I smooth out the inky shine of my hair with coconut-scented spray. I bend at just the right angle as I crawl on the floor, my legs spread like a dumb secretary in the movies, the perfect C-curve of my waist. I pull the shoes out of their boxes, the tissue paper out of the shoes. I slip them on one foot, then the other, and secure them just right.

  That’s a perfect fit, I say, propped up on my knees. Take a walk in them. No heel grips necessary, no insoles, no pads. I know how to fit a shoe.

  You’re adorable, the customers say. How old are you?

  Sixteen, I say. Too young to work this hard, but my name’s inside the shoe. I point to the label. I wink. They love this part.

  The customers hand over their credit cards, and I make my dimples show. Would you like to wear them out? You can’t return them if you do, but I’m sure you won’t want that!

  I clean up the wads of tissue paper, use a metal wand to lift and store the boxes back in their proper places in the stock room—thwack thwack—I bang the boxes until the wall of cardboard looks smooth.

  I move to the front of the store again, after each sale. I suck in until my ribs show, try to catch the gaze of anyone walking by, Hello, there. Have you seen these shoes?

  On my break, I spend all thirty minutes smoking cigarettes in the mall alleyway, next to the dumpster. I close my eyes and lean against the wall, blowing smoke into the wet heat. When I finish, I chew out the final Parliament with my heel, clean the heel with a tissue, squirt antibacterial gel on my hands, neck, and face, rub cucumber-melon lotion on these places, smooth my hair again with coconut oil, and smack on a piece of gum. I am The Greeter. The Greeter must smell good. The Greeter must smile.

  I count down the hours until my boss, Eliza, will drive me home in her black Pontiac, where we’ll chain-smoke, talk shit about our rudest Snowbird customers. I’ll do my purification process all over again before walking through the front door of my home.

  Nothing smells good here. Inside, my mother has begun writing pages and pages of words by candlelight. The title reads “Story of My Life,” but the black inky words are all illegible. They slant off the loose-leaf pages in drooping angles; they continue onto the dining room table.

  Inside, my mother tries to cook food, but she forgets what she’s cooking in the middle of it. I find SpaghettiOs mashed up with scrambled eggs, coffee grounds on top. I find crumbling sheets of seaweed inside our containers of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

  Want dinner? she’ll always offer, spooning out the mixture she made.

  No thanks.

  This is not a problem for me, because when I do eat, it’s a cold cut slice of turkey that I roll up with a single slice of provolone cheese. I give myself up to fifteen minutes after eating the roll before excusing myself to the stockroom or school bathroom, where I jam three fingers at my tonsils until it gives. Sometimes, I eat a handful of hard-boiled eggs. I hate them so much that the gagging turns on without effort, and I’ll take anything that comes this easily.

  The Senior said he would give me a lift whenever I needed, so long as I let him move two fingers, sometimes three, up between my legs before my shift. I let him do this in the mall parking garage, bored, lifting up my school uniform skirt, staring out the car window. Sometimes he jerks off in the driver’s seat with his other hand. He cleans up with a Papa John’s napkin.

  Tonight, my mother calls me on the store line, when business is slow.

  Hey Greeter! says Eliza, It’s your ma!

  What’s up? I whisper into the phone. I cup my hand around my mouth. What’s wrong?

  Can I pick you up tonight? Need to talk to you about something.

  Eliza’s taking me home, I say. Eliza always takes me home.

  I’ll be okay driving, I promise, she says.

  I can tell from her voice that she is, indeed, okay. It’s my mother on the other end; I haven’t heard her in a while. My mother, who gave me language, who grew up in a house of Chinese and Hawaiian and Pidgin but still found her own vocabulary, her own exquisite handwriting, who used to spell words like Hello and You Are Mine in frosting on my breakfast toaster strudels until I learned how to read.

  Hi, Mommy, I say. Sure.

  At nine thirty P.M., my mother is waiting outside the back exit of the mall. She’s punctual, and I am impressed by this. As I walk over to the car, I pull a fistful of my hair beneath my nose to make sure it doesn’t still smell like tobacco.

  Hi, MomMom, I say, as I climb into Big Beau. I snap the seatbelt.

  Hi, Baby, she says, really looking at me, rubbing my knee. How was work?

  Slow, I say. Didn’t hit our numbers.

  I hate the idea of you and Eliza walking to your cars this late at night, she says. It gets so dark here. Is there even any security?

  This is the Boca Raton mall, I say. Safest place in the world. What’ll they do, hold us up with Botox needles?

  After I graduate high school, in December, the same month it is now, a serial killer will hit the Boca Raton Town Center mall. The killer will ask mothers to withdraw money from a nearby ATM before duct-taping their wrists and snapping black-out swimming goggles around their faces. The first victims will be found alive, but the killer will shoot two of the victims—a mother and her daughter—point-blank, the car still running, and never be caught.

  But we don’t know that yet.

  Ten minutes into our drive, at a red light, my mother opens the car door and pukes on the street. We’re on Glades Road, and the headlights behind us are a blinding spotlight on her face, on the stream of yellow liquid spilling from her throat. When the light ticks GO, cars begin to honk. I rub my mother’s back. You okay?

  I’m fine, she says. Something I ate.

  My mother pulls over and pukes four more times before she asks me to drive.

  Do you need to go to the hospital? I ask.

  She is shakes; her lips greening. Her teeth clatter so loud I can hear them from the driver’s seat. Something I ate, she says.

  What’d you want to talk to me about? I ask her. Why’d you pick me up?

  I just wanted to see you, she said. That’s all. Just wanted to see my baby girl. She squeezes my hand.

  My mother will later tell me that this was the day she made a decision—this was the morning she flushed the bottles of pills down the toilet in a colorful clicking stream, changed her bedsheets, got dressed, sprayed perfume. She wanted to pick me up from work and tell me about it—this new life that would unfold for us, this new chapter, how sorry she was for losing herself again, how she was done this time, she really was.

  She’
ll tell me she wanted to make me proud. She wanted to live.

  Instead, she’s sick all week. She kicks the new sheets off her bed. She sweats, sleeps, gags herself with the corner of her pillow when she can’t stop crying. She mumbles words to herself—sentences I can’t make out. She stares at the ceiling with eyes like seeds. Something I ate, she says over and over again, as I press cold washcloths to her forehead.

  On the seventh day, she is not sick anymore, but she is also no longer my mother.

  The piercing parlor is just off the train tracks and you don’t need an ID to get poked. Instead, you offer to pay cash, keep a secret, and wear the shortest skirt you can find. This is what I’m told, anyway, by some of the girls at school. Addison Katz got her nipples pierced here, and she shows off the wink of silver by pulling her white uniform shirts tight against her chest. Can’t wear a bra till it heals!

  I have the night off work, so I’ve decided to go to the train tracks after school and do my best. Jenny, who is still DJ Banana, wants to get poked, too, and we decide that we’ll hold hands. I want my tongue pierced, because it reminds me of Harley and Nelle, and because it’s the one thing my mother has said she would break my neck over. Tattoo your eyeballs for all I care, she has said, but you’ll have a tramp-ring over my dead body. Or yours. Jenny says she’ll decide what to pierce once she gets there. She’s spontaneous like that. A few girls from school decide they want to tag along and watch. Even Beth shows up.

  On the way to the tracks, I call my mother. I’m going to a movie with Jenny, I say. So don’t try to call me tonight.

  Well then maybe I’ll go to the movies, too, she says. I could use a laugh, a self-date.

  In the parking lot of the parlor, I roll my khaki uniform skirt four times and pull off the Soffes I wear beneath it. I roll the skirt high enough so that the slight curves of my butt show below the pleats. I goop on lip glass. Tie my shirt into a neat side-knot to expose my stomach, my tanning bed tattoos.

  Seventeen? Eighteen? I ask Jenny.