Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(32)

Free steak? A reason for my party dress? Duh.

She wears crimped hair teased and fastened in a circle by glittering pins. The mound of bright blonde curls is bigger than a cantaloupe. Cousin Cindy never liked the natural ash of her hair, and has been painting on boxes of dye since she was old enough to ride a bike.

During the award ceremony, a shipmate dressed in all denim approaches Cousin Cindy at our table. He whispers in her ear, presses a folded piece of paper into her palm. When the trophies are gone, she takes me below deck to meet him. She holds my prizes in her arms.

The denim man is waiting in a room full of humming machinery. His name, he says, is Sean Connery. Oh my God, like the movie star? Cousin Cindy asks. Any relation?

A different spelling, he says. I’m S-H-A-W-N. I’m bigger, you see. He flexes a bicep and stares at it, points at the bulge, as if surprised. I don’t know who the real Sean Connery is, but I hate this one.

Why don’t you girlies let Shawn Connery take you on a tour of the underbelly?

Can I drive this ship? asks Cousin Cindy.

If you’re good. Shawn Connery slaps her ass.

It only takes three rooms, three explanations of the rudders, the hull, before Shawn Connery starts eying me differently, closing a metal door before I can step into the room. Don’t you have pony stuff to do? he says, giving Cousin Cindy a smile, an emphasis on that question mark in a tone they both believe to be Grown-Up Talk—a language all children, anywhere, understand. I step outside the room and wait a few minutes. I wait until I hear Cousin Cindy whispering Shawn Connery’s name before I get it, feel relieved, before I ask if they can at least hand over my trophies.



Cousin Cindy takes me to the state fair, her favorite day of the year. She wants the wind in her hair, the rickety coasters. She wants to suck on cotton candy and ride the Gravitron until we crawl across the wall to each other, in slow motion, puking. I say, Sure, Cousin Cindy. I’ll go with you, sure.

Outside the Fun House, Cousin Cindy meets a man named Costas. He works the kabob stand, but says he owns an island somewhere in Greece. His white T-shirt is tight, dirty, grease stains blooming over the muscles of his chest. He looks like a movie star playing the role of Greek Kabob Man.

Is this your child? he asks Cousin Cindy, pointing a kabob at my face. She no look anything like you?

Baby cousin, she says. Ain’t she cute?

Too bad, I love kids, he says.

Costas gives us free meat all night. Kabobs piled on Styrofoam plates, lamb shawarma. We gnaw at the chunks of salty meat until our faces glow turmeric orange. When Costas’s shift is over, he leads us to the front of every line, wins us bags of fighting fish, Chinese finger traps. We tell Costas we’re ready for him to take us away to his island. We will eat all of his food and we’ll be good wives. Costas kisses Cousin Cindy goodnight with a gentleness I have never seen from a man. Cousin Cindy smiles the whole way home and, for once, doesn’t want to talk about it.

One week later, our family sits down to eat dinner at Stir Crazy, a restaurant in the Boca Raton Town Center mall. Grandma Sitchie informs me that I’m a very rude girl for reading Go Ask Alice under the table, and tells me it’s time I learn to hold knives and forks properly, instead of chopsticks.

Costas shows up with Cousin Cindy, hand in hand. He’s holding a bouquet of daisies wrapped in brown paper, and his shoes are flawless, shining. I think he must have bought them this very day, for us.

Good-looking fella, says my Grandma, nodding. Why Cindy?

I find her fascinating, he says. And obviously, quite beautiful.

Fascinating. She pauses on the word, sips her merlot. Do you know what your fascinating girl does for a living?

Cousin Cindy hates all fairs, all amusement parks, after this night. She says they’re for kids.



Cousin Cindy doesn’t call much anymore. She’s working the Cheetah Club at night, and Diamond Dolls during the afternoon. Tonight, in that year before my father checks into rehab, there’s too much noise in the living room to sleep. My mother is gone—she’s visiting her own mother in Texas—and my father has invited his friends over. I can picture each one of them on the other side of the wall as they yell, the scene building as I listen: Voss, with hair so gelled it looks like a swim cap; Harvey, with his old eyes and young girlfriends; Brad, shaking his baby bags of pills and powders; Nikhil, who once swallowed a live goldfish. I hear their voices boom, a wild clattering of glass. Something is funny, just so funny, but I can’t make out what it is.

I want to tell them to keep it down. I want to tell them I have school tomorrow, remember, there’s a kid here. There’s a kid who never makes it to school because of whatever you’re always doing in my living room, which is mine, with my horse pictures hanging on the walls, my ribbons, my shoes kicked muddy across the carpet, my hermit crab loose somewhere in the couch upon which you are sitting.

I open my door and walk down the hallway toward the living room. This is against the rules and I know it—Do not leave your room past ten P.M., do not interrupt when friends are over, do NOT. The light in the living room is an adjustment, the smoke; I have to blink hard and fast to see. The friends are all sprawled on the couch, the carpet, burning cherries of Marlboros in their mouths, some with their belt buckles hanging. My father is passed out on the floor with an ashtray next to his head. Between two of the men on the couch, the back of a woman. She’s wearing nothing but a cheetah-patterned bra, a thong. She’s snorting powder off a flat, metal end of a lobster fork that another man is holding up for her. Her hair extension is loose, swinging by a platinum thread.