Before You Knew My Name (20)

It isn’t always, only ever, bad. You should see them dancing with each other. The world held in their pressing palms. The way all the little bruises disappear. They fit together so well when they’re dancing. You might even think it is love, when Ruby places her head on his shoulder, when Ash slides his hand to the small of her back.

They have their favourite songs, just like any other couple. Words they mouth to each other, melodies they like to wrap their bodies around.

It isn’t always, only ever, bad. That’s mostly why she had to leave him.



‘So you’re not going back to Gloria’s, then?’

‘Nope. She still thinks I’m at the lake with you,’ I say, holding the phone out from my ear for a second, listening as Tammy takes a dramatic drag of her cigarette, the sound huffing down the line. I can just see her there on her father’s porch, cocooned inside a thick blanket, trying in vain to stay warm, now that her dad has inexplicably banned smoking and drinking inside the cabin.

‘You could quit smoking, too,’ I’d said, when she told me about these new house rules, but she’d laughed her throaty laugh and called me crazy.

‘The fuck I’m supposed to do around here if I can’t smoke or drink, Alice?’

We agreed she had a point.

Tammy knows I’ve been staying with Mr Jackson these past few weeks, has even suggested this was her idea all along, my ‘Get the hell out of Dodge’, as she called it. But, if I didn’t know better, I’d say my sudden foray into rule-breaking has confused her, when this has generally been her domain. I know for sure she has never had any respect for Gloria, even if my mother’s cousin kept me away from the worst parts of the system by taking me in.

‘My mom chose her for a reason,’ I’ve had to explain many times, usually after Gloria had pounded on my bedroom door, yelling at us to shut up, or I’d showed up at Tammy’s house in the middle of the night yet again, because another man didn’t want anyone seeing him come and go from Gloria’s bed.

‘My mom knew Gloria would let me be. It was never going to work with someone … parental.’

‘She could have been nicer though, Alice.’ This is what Tammy always said. ‘It’s not like your mom had just tragically died or anything, hey.’

Tammy, my champion, the first and only real friend I made after I moved in with Gloria.

‘I like your jacket. And sorry about your mom,’ Tam had said, sitting down beside me in the school cafeteria that first time we met. Letting me know, in two short sentences, that she wasn’t going to make a fuss, and I’ve valued her economic version of friendship ever since. I also understand her well enough by now to know she’s not concerned about me lying to Gloria. Just curious as to how I’ve managed to disappear.

(It’s easy, I’ll want to remind her later. If no one notices you’re gone.)

‘Enough about that bitch anyway,’ Tammy says now, as if she’s reading my mind. ‘I want to know the juicy stuff. What’s it like with Mr J? Is he as good as we thought he’d be?’

I’ve been drinking a beer during our late afternoon call, and I swish it around in my mouth as I consider the question. I think suddenly—explicitly—of Mr Jackson’s bourbon, how he poured it all over my nipples last night, and the slow way he lapped it up. Telling me nothing had ever tasted so good, and how, when he poured it lower down, the heat and rasp of his tongue set me spinning.

‘Uh. Yeah. It’s … good,’ I manage to say, my face on fire.

‘I fucking knew it!’

Even with our bad reception, I can hear Tammy clapping.

‘Tell me more,’ she starts to say, when I see a car pulling up in the drive. Mr Jackson has come home early today.

‘Sorry, Tam. I gotta go,’ I say quickly, my cheeks still flushed. ‘I’ll tell you every sordid detail soon, I promise.’

Tammy sighs down the phone. This is our first real conversation in weeks.

‘Whatever, jailbait. Just be careful, okay—’

She doesn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Mr Jackson is already through the door, reaching for me. I hang up the call without saying goodbye, unaware we won’t ever speak again.

Sometimes a person slips out of your life so easily, you wonder if they were ever really there to begin with.



Tammy called me jailbait. Tonight, filming himself slowly moving in and out of me, Mr Jackson said we were equals. That he had met his match, finally. When he was done, when his eyes fluttered backwards and he slumped against my warm body, I had a sense, for the first time, that he might be wrong. Because I felt, in that moment, the slick of him all over my skin, that I might be the powerful one. His needs could be met. He could be satisfied. But I could survive with a great, yawning hunger in my belly. I could make him happy, while my own bones were hollow with grief.

I heard my mother’s voice then, remembered lying next to her in bed when I was maybe eight or nine years old. She had been crying and I’d come into her room, long enough after the front door had slammed shut for me to know it was safe. I crawled up next to her and wrapped my thin, child’s arms around her, and she only let herself cry for another minute before she sniffed, wiped her tears on the sheet, and turned to face me. In the early morning light, her face was beautiful, the way some faces soften when sad, and she kissed my nose.