Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(40)

I got my driver’s license that summer. I was left with my mother, with those piles and piles of clothes, the empty wrappers of horse pills. Left with a dull hammering at my temples when I ran out of cigarettes and didn’t know how to get them. At night, I drove along Deerfield Beach and waited for that fullness in my ears, those voices deep and melodic as a gospel as we crawled through the streets of Miami looking for somebody, anybody—I love you. I love you. I love you, too—alone in my father’s convertible.

He bought me a new car—fancier—the month before he died. I want the old one back.

Dear Tribes of Fatherless Girls: I’m still here.



HOW TO SURVIVE IN BOCA RATON

Some days, in the corner of the school cafeteria, Calorie Valerie feeds dollar bills into the vending machine. She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is looking, then packs each crinkling bag of chips, each box of cookies, neatly into her backpack. She pushes each package down like she’s trying to drown it, fits more than what seems possible into her little pink bag. Nobody pays attention to druggie freak Valerie anymore, except for me. I watch dollar after dollar after dollar after dollar.



THE GREETER

They call me The Greeter. I sell shoes at the Boca Raton Town Center mall—bedazzled stilettos and platforms, neon-strapped pumps saved for special occasions. I stand by the entrance of the store, heels dug into the carpet, tummy tucked in, and I greet people. Hi, How are you, sunshine? Have you seen our shoes today? I wear sparkling eyeshadow for the job. I smooth out the inky shine of my hair with coconut-scented spray. I bend at just the right angle as I crawl on the floor, my legs spread like a dumb secretary in the movies, the perfect C-curve of my waist. I pull the shoes out of their boxes, the tissue paper out of the shoes. I slip them on one foot, then the other, and secure them just right.

That’s a perfect fit, I say, propped up on my knees. Take a walk in them. No heel grips necessary, no insoles, no pads. I know how to fit a shoe.

You’re adorable, the customers say. How old are you?

Sixteen, I say. Too young to work this hard, but my name’s inside the shoe. I point to the label. I wink. They love this part.

The customers hand over their credit cards, and I make my dimples show. Would you like to wear them out? You can’t return them if you do, but I’m sure you won’t want that!

I clean up the wads of tissue paper, use a metal wand to lift and store the boxes back in their proper places in the stock room—thwack thwack—I bang the boxes until the wall of cardboard looks smooth.

I move to the front of the store again, after each sale. I suck in until my ribs show, try to catch the gaze of anyone walking by, Hello, there. Have you seen these shoes?

On my break, I spend all thirty minutes smoking cigarettes in the mall alleyway, next to the dumpster. I close my eyes and lean against the wall, blowing smoke into the wet heat. When I finish, I chew out the final Parliament with my heel, clean the heel with a tissue, squirt antibacterial gel on my hands, neck, and face, rub cucumber-melon lotion on these places, smooth my hair again with coconut oil, and smack on a piece of gum. I am The Greeter. The Greeter must smell good. The Greeter must smile.

I count down the hours until my boss, Eliza, will drive me home in her black Pontiac, where we’ll chain-smoke, talk shit about our rudest Snowbird customers. I’ll do my purification process all over again before walking through the front door of my home.

Nothing smells good here. Inside, my mother has begun writing pages and pages of words by candlelight. The title reads “Story of My Life,” but the black inky words are all illegible. They slant off the loose-leaf pages in drooping angles; they continue onto the dining room table.

Inside, my mother tries to cook food, but she forgets what she’s cooking in the middle of it. I find SpaghettiOs mashed up with scrambled eggs, coffee grounds on top. I find crumbling sheets of seaweed inside our containers of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Want dinner? she’ll always offer, spooning out the mixture she made.

No thanks.

This is not a problem for me, because when I do eat, it’s a cold cut slice of turkey that I roll up with a single slice of provolone cheese. I give myself up to fifteen minutes after eating the roll before excusing myself to the stockroom or school bathroom, where I jam three fingers at my tonsils until it gives. Sometimes, I eat a handful of hard-boiled eggs. I hate them so much that the gagging turns on without effort, and I’ll take anything that comes this easily.

The Senior said he would give me a lift whenever I needed, so long as I let him move two fingers, sometimes three, up between my legs before my shift. I let him do this in the mall parking garage, bored, lifting up my school uniform skirt, staring out the car window. Sometimes he jerks off in the driver’s seat with his other hand. He cleans up with a Papa John’s napkin.

Tonight, my mother calls me on the store line, when business is slow.

Hey Greeter! says Eliza, It’s your ma!

What’s up? I whisper into the phone. I cup my hand around my mouth. What’s wrong?

Can I pick you up tonight? Need to talk to you about something.

Eliza’s taking me home, I say. Eliza always takes me home.

I’ll be okay driving, I promise, she says.

I can tell from her voice that she is, indeed, okay. It’s my mother on the other end; I haven’t heard her in a while. My mother, who gave me language, who grew up in a house of Chinese and Hawaiian and Pidgin but still found her own vocabulary, her own exquisite handwriting, who used to spell words like Hello and You Are Mine in frosting on my breakfast toaster strudels until I learned how to read.