by Randi Pink
A few years back, when Sue was barely a teenager, she’d wandered off on one of her downtown adventures. She was approached by an elderly homeless woman pushing a filled shopping cart. The woman had asked her for a dollar, but instead, Sue gave her a crisp twenty-dollar bill. “I’m sorry you don’t have any place to live,” she told the woman.
In response, the woman held the twenty high in the air and said, “If you’re giving me this because you feel sorry for me, I’ll give it right back to you. You reek of richness and pity.” And then the woman hooked her neck back and spat to her left as Sue hurried off.
Sue had no idea what to say or how to handle that moment. As she’d passed her money along to the woman in need, she’d felt a surge of warmth and self-sacrifice shoot through her body. She was a do-gooder. Planting a seed within the community. She was surely someone who gave a damn about her fellow man. That was her last twenty—her bus or cab fare. Without it, she didn’t know how she would get back to Kenilworth. Yet still, with the best of intentions, she’d offended.
From that moment, she decided that looking down her nose at anyone was a privilege not afforded to the well-off. People automatically assumed she would do it, so Sue went out of her way not to. Sue tried extra hard not to show those things on her face. Sometimes too hard probably.
Mary sang the chorus over and over like she didn’t know the full lyrics. Sue almost picked up her guitar to strum along, but she decided what the hell. Go ahead. Throw caution into the wind. She got up and joined the circle of twisting girls.
“You weren’t lying!” Missippi hollered. “Your knees are knocking!”
Lillian grabbed her hip bones and started manually moving them to the music, but it was no use. Sue’s body couldn’t be controlled. She was chronically offbeat. The girls fell into hysterics. Even Ms. Pearline stopped painting to chuckle from behind her easel.
Sue’s mother was so right. This was the best place for her to have this child. Surrounded by laughter, love, and other young girls in her same predicament. How could her mother have known? A place of paint and music and self-sacrifice. Sue wanted to call her mother and thank her. She also wanted to walk right up to Michael Matthews and rip the peace patches from his jacket. He didn’t deserve them. Sex with him wasn’t even that good. He panted like an overheated dog.
Then she thought of her father. He would be furious if he saw. Not just the pregnancy part. That was bad enough, but the company surrounding her. Sue, herself, tried desperately to see people as auras of human energy, either positive or negative, never by the amount of pigment in their skin. To Sue, stereotypes of any kind were unfair. But her father, her horrible, horrible father, saw color first. If he saw where she was now, he’d shower the group with slurs, remove her, and forbid her ever to return. He’d judge them immediately as less-thans. Not worthy of his company or his daughter’s.
The more she knew about the real world, the more she loathed her father’s haughty guts.
* * *
They were supposed to sleep together in the large bed, head to foot, but that didn’t happen. They fell out after the Johnny Cash twist party and talked all night long about life, love, and, most of all, the road that had led each of them to Ms. Pearline’s twentieth-floor apartment.
“I thought I was in love,” Lillian said before letting out a huff of air like an annoyed mare. “He was a fine one. Shiny shoes and a head full of grease.” She laughed. “He never did let me touch his hair. Not once. Even while we were … you know. If this child looks like him, he’ll be a fox, though.”
“He was your boyfriend?” Missippi’s voice was colored with wonder. When Lillian nodded in response, she continued. “How long y’all go steady?”
“Few months,” Lillian replied, attempting to look unaffected. “I made him wait weeks, but he wouldn’t leave me alone about it. Pesky bastard. It’s all he ever talked about. He was a dog in after a bone, come to think of it. He was…”
Lillian trailed off without finishing her thought. It was as if she’d been swept into a memory she couldn’t vocalize.
“What did your mother say?” Sue inquired. “When she found out.”
Lillian laughed. “You just read my mind, gal. That didn’t go well. My mother’s a Seventh-day Adventist, you see? Didn’t go well at all.”
“Me, neither,” Mary injected. “My mama broke every plate in the kitchen when I told her.”
Missippi’s head lowered when they talked about their mothers. Sue saw it, but she was the only one who had. Her instinct told her to change the topic.
“What about your boy, Mary?” Sue asked, turning her full attention toward her. “Boyfriend or playmate?”
“Where I come from there’s no such thing as a playmate,” Mary replied with a wink. “Doesn’t go over in a town as small as mine. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Boyfriend or nothing.”
“How long?” Sue was still watching Missippi in her peripheral vision to make sure she was okay.
“Dennis has been my guy since fourth grade.” Mary’s voice perked up when she said his name. “Never missed a day without talking to him until I got here. I miss him more than a little bit.”
Missippi sighed longingly. She was a girl who had never been loved by a boy, Sue thought. She wanted to ask her what her story was. It was her turn to speak, after all. The other two girls got caught up just like Sue had. From their stories, she surmised they’d had sex at the right moment of the month for egg to meet sperm, and there they were, cross-legged in Ms. Pearline’s living room. But Missippi was an innocent. A baby giraffe wandering around clueless, malleable, vulnerable. She wouldn’t dare ask her story. Not here, and likely, not ever. She had more respect for her than that. And if she wanted to tell it, she would.
“So, Missippi,” Lillian jumped in. “Who knocked you up?”
Sue’s quiet years at home with her mother had taught her to read body movements. Since her mother was stellar at hiding her outward emotions, Sue had become expert at it. A twitch of the nose here and a shrug of the shoulder there. Involuntary knuckle pops, ankles crossed against the right leg of the chair, and, above all, the unmistakable purse of the lips. Sue wanted to give Lillian a pass, because she surely didn’t know what Missippi’s body language meant. Sue could tell that Lillian was just teasing. She meant zero harm, but still, Sue wanted to punch her square in the nose for asking such an inappropriate question.
“I don’t have a boyfriend to speak of,” Missippi said in a low voice covered in glum.
Sue placed her hand on Missippi’s thin knee. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”
Missippi looked grateful and shook her head. Just as Sue thought, she hadn’t wanted to share. Lillian and Mary caught the drift and also dropped it.
They went on talking for hours about hometowns and family and friends. Things they missed about home and things they’d hate to go back to. In the end, they even talked about the war. Uncles, fathers, brothers, cousins, and friends who’d come back different. Sue had to temper herself. She didn’t want to express the depths of her hatred of Vietnam to them on the first night. Might scare them off like it had plenty of other potential friends.
Then came the question everyone wanted to know. Always.
“What’s your daddy do, Sue?”
“Banker,” Sue lied. “He’s a banker at a bank.”
He was anything but a banker. She always felt those questions—who’s your father, and what does he do?—invasive. It loomed over her large house and her mom’s fancy car and her sleepaway camp. Everyone wanted to know, no matter where she went, who her father was and what he did for a living. She stunk of being a girl with an important father. She’d always told the truth until that moment. Maybe it was because she really cared what these girls thought of her. Really, truly, wholeheartedly cared. For that reason, she lied through her teeth. What her father did was a complete, utter embarrassment to Sue. And she thought too highly of her new friends to let them know.
> * * *
When Sue woke up, they were flailed on top of one another. Arms draped over, legs intertwined, heads on laps and shoulders. Somewhere in the night, Sue had sunk to the bottom of the pile. Trapped underneath girls she’d only met the day before. Sue caught a whiff of rotten eggs. One of the three girls had farted in her face, and she tried to hold her breath until it passed. It didn’t pass. It was thick like a wool blanket, and lasting.
She tried to focus on something else. Then a memory flooded Sue’s mind. Summer camp in Cambridge last year. The girls bunked four to a room, each in their own twin bed. Roommates were supposedly randomly assigned, but she was put with three other senators’ daughters, which only amplified her father’s influence. He’d wanted her to run with her own kind. To form a flock of politicians’ kids like graceful geese in pearls. He was already pleased by the possibility of Sue marrying one of their brothers.
From day one in Cambridge, Sue knew she’d be an immediate outcast with her roommates. She skipped into the room, expecting three free-minded girls from other parts of the country. She’d expected some culture, art, music. But when she saw them, she saw only hair. Big, beautiful, well-cared-for hair. She smelled the burning of hair. Hair made its way into her potato chips. She fished it from the bathroom sink and tripped on curlers with hair left behind in them. It was a nightmare of a horrible summer of hair. The best she could do to pass the time was read and count days.
Ms. Pearline’s apartment was what camp should’ve been. Sue thought Ms. Pearline possessed some magic. She had transformed a small living room, no larger than Sue’s closet back home, into an oasis for “girls like us.” Sue had witnessed, on the streets of Chicago and DC and in the halls of Congress, a versus nation. US versus the Vietcong. Hippies versus police. Teens versus parents. But somehow, with so little, Ms. Pearline blanked out race and war and anger, to paint over it all with pure acceptance and vibrant color.
The foul smell still held on until an arm began to stir beneath Sue. Then a leg kicked someone in the face.
“Ouch!”
And then everyone woke up to the smell.
“My Lord, who did that?”
“It was YOU!”
“No, it was not ME! It was YOU!”
“I know what your gas smells like, Mary—that was your gas!”
“I swear it wasn’t me.”
“Well, how do you know if you were asleep?”
“Uhh…”
“Ha! It was you!”
“Stop,” Sue interrupted. “Stop it, girls. It’s okay. It was me.”
Sue’s new nickname was Stankybooty, and it made her laugh every time.
* * *
The following day, as Sue strummed random tunes on her guitar, a pounding at the door scared them all silent.
“Open up!” yelled a forceful male voice. “Now!”
A man’s voice in this place was not a welcome sound. After Michael had revealed himself as a poser, Sue realized most of them were selfish and pretentious, very much like her father. Women were altogether better.
“Girls,” Ms. Pearline said before closing her robe tightly over her nightdress and long johns. “Go into my room and stay quiet.”
They filed in before pressing their ears to the door in order to hear the conversation clearly.
“You’re late with your money, Pearl,” the man spat. He sounded drunk.
Sue could tell from his first, short sentence what type of man he was. A man who loved to take out misplaced aggressions on women. A bully of a sucker of a man. She couldn’t see him, but she visualized him large-bellied with dirty hands. She hated him without knowing him. Then she turned her hatred inward.
A free spirit at heart, Sue never regretted anything. She saw the world as a fishbowl filled to the brim with choices, all leading to the same singular destiny. For that reason, it didn’t matter which path a person chose to walk. She would still wind up occupying the space she should at the exact time she was supposed to. But she should’ve made Michael wear that condom. Men like this, men like Michael, and men like her father fathered children. She knew that when she let him refuse the condom that day. It’s too small, he’d said, the fucking liar. And she’d been dumb enough to go along with it.
“I believe I paid you in full, Mr. Reese,” Ms. Pearline replied slowly and deliberately. “Here’s last week’s receipt you signed as proof.”
He laughed. “I know you paid me. I came for my tip.”
“Pardon me?” she replied with the cunning of a woman who knows how to handle belligerent men with outsize egos. “What kind of tip are you looking for? I gave you all I have.” Her voice had taken on a hint of teasing, like a Kenilworth wife asking for a bigger diamond ring.
“A tip for incentive,” he said. “Not to tell the authorities that you’re running a baby factory out of your apartment, that’s what.” His slurred speech made him hard to understand, but all four girls caught his threat loud and clear. “I hear the screams. I see the neighbors coming with blankets and little hats. I’m not stupid, Pearl. You treat me like an idiot.”
Sue ran into people like this at her rallies and marches. They were usually on the other side, angry that hippies like her would dare wear what they wore and do what they did. She pitied those people. No one should be that mad about anything. She’d scurry to the front of the picket line, hang her guitar over her shoulder, and play for them. But it only made them angrier. Once, a man who sounded drunk like Mr. Reese threw his beer bottle at her guitar. There was still a dent in the soundboard near the pick guard. Glass shattered, nicking her thumb and pinkie finger. It bled like hell, but it didn’t hurt at all. For the longest time, the wood smelled like blood and beer.
“I know you’re not an idiot, Mr. Reese,” said Ms. Pearline in an even softer, more feminine tone. “You’re the smartest man around here.” She giggled.
“Smart enough to see that rich guitar over there,” Mr. Reese said cunningly. “My uncle plays, and that thing looks like it cost a pretty penny.”
Ms. Pearline was quick. “That old thing? I got that from a Junior League thrift shop. See how it’s all beat up and dented? Cost next to nothing.”
Mr. Reese let out a joyful sound that only comes from a stroked ego that doesn’t deserve stroking. Sue in no way pitied this man. Actually, she wanted to storm the living room and strangle him. But, in that moment, she recognized the danger of her presence. She wanted to ignore it, but it hit her like a brick between the eyes.
If she showed herself to anyone, even by accident, the whole thing could fall to pieces. Sue looked around her—Lillian tried to look unaffected, Mary came off as nervous as Ms. Pearline, and Missippi was adorable and curious even now. The last thing Sue ever wanted was to get any of these girls in trouble. She knew her being there made them more vulnerable. She gave off something she’d never been able to pinpoint. There was something in her posture or her way of speaking. Something in the way she walked or carried her guitar. She reeked of wealth without even trying. Everyone she met wanted to know what her father did because of it. And if that horrible man stormed through the door to find her there, who knows what he might’ve done to access that wealth.
Sue thought of Ms. Pearline. Two days ago she wouldn’t have imagined that such a woman could exist in the world. A woman willing to sacrifice everything, her whole life and youth, for a cause bigger than herself. Sue wanted to be that kind of woman, but she knew she wasn’t. Sure, she marched and held up signs and stuck flowers in police helmets. That was something, she thought. Well, it wasn’t nothing. But at night she curled into her plush bed and threw her day’s clothes on the floor for her maid to pick up and wash the following day.
She was no activist. Not really. Ms. Pearline was what true sacrifice looked like.
* * *
Later that night, when everyone else was asleep, Sue found Missippi sitting on the windowsill, her round face glowing in the moonlight and her extra-large belly squished against the glass. Missippi look
ed like a brown Madonna painting. Haloed, young, and free of guilt. Who did this to this girl? Sue couldn’t help thinking.
Sue, herself, chose sex. She’d made a decision to sleep with whoever she wanted and didn’t care much what anyone thought about that. But she knew that sex could be awful and dirty and traumatizing. She thought of herself at Sippi’s age. Sex wasn’t something she really thought about back then. It had only come into her orbit her second year in high school.
“You awake, Sue?” Missippi whispered. “I see you peeking. Come on over.”
Sue slowly lifted Lillian’s or Mary’s forearm from her thigh and eased her way up from the crowded bed to sit next to Missippi in the window.
“They stay out there all night long,” Missippi said as she pointed to the young boys illuminated under the glow of a streetlamp. “I wish I knew what they was saying.”
“I know,” Sue said before nudging Missippi’s arm. “Let’s give them dialogue. Make up what they’re saying from up here.”
Missippi laughed. “I do that back home. I’m good at it!”
“Okay, let’s go.” Sue waited for one of the boys to make a move. As the one in the green shirt began to swing on the swing set, Sue began in a fake deep voice. “Hey, I’m Greg. Do I look like a Greg to you?”
Missippi picked it up without a hitch. “Yeah, brother. You look like a Greg to me. What I look like to you? How ’bout a George? I look like a George to you?”
“Sure do to me. Hey, George?”
“Yeah, Greg?”
“Why do we hang out here so late every single night?” Sue asked, still faking a deeper voice than her own. “We should really get some sleep.”
“Sleep, Greg, psshhht. Sleep is for babies. We can swing all night and jump on the monkey bars until the sun come up.”
Missippi and Sue laughed so hard they almost woke up the others. They became friends without any effort whatsoever. It was an easy union. Immediate and easy.