Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(10)

My two uncles like to hammer up on our roof while I’m trying to study Latin. They mow the lawn, scrub our water tanks. They pour jugs of chlorine and chemicals into our fountain out front until it looks carbonated. My mother is proud of her little brother and his friend. She knows they’re trying to be good, and clean from dope, which is something she also wants very badly for herself. When my uncles are not fixing up the house for cash, they’re making calls for my father. In our living room, all of them scream at people on the phone and sell stocks for someone named Jordan Belfort. This is something I won’t understand until the day I do.

My parents are leaving town again. So mega lucky, say the kids at school. Rich parents, all those vacays. Do you get back souvenirs? Pets? But I’m never really sure where they go. Last month, I know my father went to South Africa to visit my half brothers, who live in Johannesburg with their mother. I know this because my father got into some sort of trouble on the plane. Some men in suits decided that smoking in the sky is dangerous, a menace, and banned it just a few days before his nineteen-hour flight. At the fifth hour, my father snuck a smoke in the airplane bathroom with his head in the toilet, flushing every few seconds to suck the evidence down. He returned home with some stories about this incident, and a mousetrap-sized metal dulcimer for me.

What would you say to Uncle Whack taking care of you this week, huh? Does that sound like fun? Uncle Whack can take you to Blockbuster. I bet he’ll even watch you ride! My mother is using the voice she uses when she wants something. It climbs up and down octaves—a sing-song, composed, motherly pitch.

But where are you going now?

A romantic getaway, okay? Don’t worry about that, okay? We need mommy-daddy time. And next week, Daddy will take you to Vegas.

Okay.

I don’t want Uncle Whack to watch me ride horses. Riding is the only thing in the world that’s my own. I took my dad for a ride only once, in North Carolina, around my birthday in July. He slung his right leg over an Appaloosa named Trigger, hooked his Gucci leather loafers into the western stirrups, and let me adjust his heels. I led him up Smith Mountain in a winding trot. My father smoked with his lips while both hands gripped the saddle horn, which I found particularly impressive.

Son, he said. What do I do about, how do I go about, how do I—I forgot to wear underwear.

Pick a side and move it all over, I said. I didn’t know what it meant when I said it, but I’d heard this question and answer before with other men, on other trails.

My father wore a face bunched in pain for the rest of the trail. He couldn’t keep his toes up, his shoulders square; he looked completely amateur, sloppy, bumbling. When I think about riding, this is what I love most: I have a power, a strength, a language with animals big enough to kill a person, easy. It’s the one thing that I have.

Are you paying Uncle Whack to hang out with me? I ask.

He needs the money, my mother says. He’s on a good track, doing the good work. One day at a time.

What about Uncle Kai?

He’s not ready, she says. Not responsible, not yet.

Auntie T?

Auntie T isn’t coming back for a while.

Fine, I say. If we do grown-up stuff. But only if.

My parents give Uncle Whack very clear instructions like they’ve been practicing for this moment all their lives—Parenting—to show somebody what it is they know.

She doesn’t like to be left alone, says my mother, especially at night. She has night terrors. Chronic nosebleeds, but she knows how to handle it. She can cook soup for herself, and mostly she’ll read all day. Letters, too. You’ll have to take her to the barn to feed her horses; you’ll have to help her take her boots off—pull by the heel; you’ll have to make sure she wears a helmet. You’ll get it. And whatever you do, obviously, don’t let anyone in this house without a warrant. Lock up. The alarm code is 7-11.

When I’m older, I’ll understand that this is around the time the FBI became interested in my father and his friends. My uncle. Jordan Belfort. Soon, our family will make headlines. But right now, I nod and say, We are very private people, yes, the way I’ve been taught. My father winks at me. He hands Uncle Whack a wad of cash, thick as a hockey puck, folded over in half. Careful with her, he says. She’s good.

Uncle Whack is twenty-six years old, and I think he’s the oldest friend I’ll ever have. He wears blue basketball shorts with tiny pinprick-sized holes all over them, pulled down to just above his knees. Above that, plaid boxers lumpy with his white tee. His face is a perfect boyish circle, dimpled in the cheeks, and sometimes he wears a sideways baseball cap over the skunk-do. He doesn’t look like any of my men on black box channels 590–595.

Got it, Mad Man, says Uncle Whack, giving a salute.

Almost forgot, says my father, handing him the keys to our car.

Careful with my Jag, he says. I know people who’d take care of you if anything happens to my Jag. Yeah? Yeah? He points to Uncle Whack and play-punches him in the chest. We all laugh along. Uncle Whack slings my father’s bags over his shoulders—Louis Vuitton printed leather, matching—and straightens his back like a butler as he walks my parents to the limousine parked on our black yawn of driveway.

Next week, Vegas! screams my father. Get ready, baby!

I wave from the front door.

Did you know a rat lives inside our Jaguar? I ask.

Did you know is my favorite game to play with Uncle Whack. It makes me sound informed, knowledgeable.