Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(14)

You can’t eat strawberry flavored shit if you’re Lil Kiwi, he says. That ain’t right.

I don’t want to be Lil Kiwi anymore, I say.

Oh yeah? Then who?

Call me Sandy, I say. It’s my show name.



The next week, as promised, my father takes me to Las Vegas. Our connecting flight is in St. Louis, and we’re delayed; there’s a storm coming through. My father is irritable in the airport, shaking his foot, tapping his pinky ring against the armrest. He points over to the smoking lounge. It looks like a giant ice cube from across the terminal—a glass square with eerie cloudiness. You can handle it, right? says my father. You’re a big girl now.

I clamp my mouth closed as we walk into the room. I do not want to be poisoned to death in the St. Louis airport. I sit next to my father on a bench, and we’re surrounded by other people with their own brands of smokes, their own newspapers and headlines. I want to talk to each and every person, ask where they’re going, but everyone, including my father, is quiet. They puff. They read. The streams of smoke break, then lift. It looks like ballet—this evidence of adulthood. My father wraps his arm around me like he’s proud, and I rest my head in his armpit, open my mouth, breathe in the gray air as deeply as I can. I hold it. Breathe out.

There are old, splintered, wooden seats back at our boarding gate. The wood is soft; it gives way to my thumbnail. The wood is scattered with initials and drawings—hearts, stars, and forevers—and when my father goes to the bathroom, I sneak the keys to his Jaguar out of his sports jacket pocket for my own message. I want to carve my name into the armrest to honor this day, the day I was woman enough to sit inside the smoking room, but I’m afraid to get caught before our flight; I’m afraid of proof; I think someone might arrest me.

I grip the keys in a fist and bring it down. Push and drag it.



CRY BABY

His name is Quince Pearson. Quince has black hair, expressive hands, an infomercial smile I will never have. He’s the star basketball player, but we share an Honors history class because Quince is not afraid to be smart, to crinkle up his forehead and consider the past. My heart burst last week when Quincy did a presentation on Euripides. He unzipped his khaki uniform shorts at the front of the classroom, scissor kicked them off his ankles till his belt buckle clacked against the wall. We all stared at Quince’s Abercrombie boxers, his pale, hairless legs, as he said, Eu-rip-a-dese-pants-off! That’s how you wanna remember this dude! I think Quince is the most creative person I’ve ever met. He is eleven going on twenty.

Today, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. McBoner, wheels over our classroom television and fumbles to click it on for the morning announcements. Her name is really Mrs. McBride, but we’ve renamed each of our teachers and given them upgrades—Ms. Clit, Mrs. Tear-My-Condom, Dr. Gooch, Ms. Dyke-Hoochie. The TV snaps on and off, switches channels, because some kids in class installed computer programming into their wristwatches and this allows them to control the TV. Sometimes, during a test, one of them will turn the TV on mute, raise the volume to the max, then unmute so the speakers blare some kind of Days of Our Lives romance scene. This made Mrs. Tear-My-Condom cry on behalf of Mr. Tear-My-Condom being dead, and her suspicion that he was reaching out to her in this small, tacky way.

I’m in middle school now, and my best friend’s name is Clarissa Donoto. She’s in the seat next to me, taking notes on the morning announcements. We’re best friends because Clarissa is also tormented and, together, we torment other losers. She’s got a scraped-off dinner plate kind of face—round, blemished, pale—but she’s the smartest girl in school with the bubbliest handwriting. Today a boy named Harry sits behind her bouncing his sneakers on her metal desk basket until her double-chin jiggles. Fat Fuck! Fat Fuck! Fat Fuck! he whispers, leaning his lumpy, pink face into the back of her hair, but Clarissa is used to this by now—a pro—she never cries; her eyes don’t even leave the TV screen.

The high schoolers on television read from a sheet of paper. They make stupid jokes and talk about Dan Marino’s legacy and how he will build us a new football field made of state-of-the-art Astroturf. His son attends our school, but he doesn’t even play football—he’s into drama.

Surprise, surprise, the high schoolers say on the screen, a middle school dance this weekend! No uniforms necessary. It’s goin’ down in the gym!

I reach over to grab Clarissa by the shoulder, but she gives me a look like, Ugh, Stop. Clarissa is my only friend, but she is also trying to move up. Outside school, we sing every word of Rent, tell secrets, and look up pictures of Bonsai Kittens with the bedroom lights off; her mom makes us baked ziti and classic Italian desserts; I attend Clarissa’s soccer games. But in school, our friendship is cautionary. Clarissa grew up with members of the A-crowd, the most popular, and when they start on me she’s allowed to join in on the chanting, Your underwear is showing, Queera. Get bent! I know where I stand: I wear a soup thermos with a strap around my neck, a back brace; I have an imaginary boyfriend named Brahman; I roll a suitcase filled with books because my equestrian posture is still considered precious and can’t handle any excess weight. My nose bleeds onto my desk at least twice a day. I want Clarissa to move up, and I’m no good for that. It’s an arrangement I understand—a deal I would, and eventually will, gladly take for myself.

It’s 1999 and our prep school is one of the first in the country to issue mandatory laptops to every student. They’re called Study-Pros, and they’re wired to a group of men in the library called the Tech-Center who observe and control how we use them. If we get distracted in class, clicking around on Napster, a member of the Tech-Center will often move the arrow of our mouse directly to the “X” like some phantom conscience. Recently, a member of the Tech-Center called my father to tell him I had downloaded porn videos onto my Study-Pro after school hours, when I didn’t think it counted. My father told him to go fuck right off.