Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(42)

I need a cigarette first, I tell the men. I’m trying to sound confident, mature. So I’ll come back in five.

Jenny joins me outside. She doesn’t smoke, but she likes the smell of it.

Can you believe it? she says. That was so easy! We didn’t need to suck a dick to make that happen.

We both laugh at this. I take a long drag and try to steady my hands. I am terrified of needles. We’re quiet as we watch the cars pass over the train tracks in hard thumps. This other part of town. Garbage blowing all over—plastic bags, McDonald’s cups—the smell of seaweed. Apartments nearby that we visit for public school parties, the bad ones.

Shit, is that your mom? says Jenny.

It is. I hide the cigarette behind my skirt, instinctively, though I know she does not see me. My mother is driving Big Beau over the tracks. I watch her through the window. Sweet, pale moon-sliver of a woman, a sad face. Her black hair is cut jagged, framing her chin. My mother. From this view, she could be going to the grocery store to buy wonton wraps, going to Blockbuster to pick out just the right movie, meeting our family for dinner on the pier. But I know where she’s going in this part of town. Cousin Cindy has told me where Boca Brad lives, and I watch my mom’s car take exactly the turns I expect. Here we are on the same block, Mother, neither one of us near a movie theater, so far from where we ought to be.

Inside, I swish my mouth with so much Listerine it makes my eyes water. I lean back on the chair as the dangling-ear man adjusts his light, moving it along my whole body, taking his time. I open my mouth and the man pinches my tongue with a metal claw. Drool pools around the corners of my mouth. I look him right in the eyes as he brings a needle the size of a soda straw to the underside of my tongue, jabs it up, delivers me the sharpest pain I have ever felt and a high I’ve never matched since.

My mother is no longer fighting the sick. She’s in her Other Place again, writing in her secret language across the pages, the table. Today, she has conspiracy theories about how my father spends his time in New York. He has a secret wife up there, she says. A white woman. Tall, in a pink dress. Nothing like her.

Not true, I say. He’s working hard in the city. Probably freezing right about now.

Go to school, she says, and maybe he’ll come home when you’re out.

I don’t think so, I say, kissing her on the head. I wonder if she knows who I am. Glad you’re feeling better.

The rage—it’s never toward my mother or father. It’s their dealers: Boca Brad, Uncle Nacho, Nurse Harmony, Karate Kurt. I fantasize about slitting them with paper cuts between the webs of their fingers, their eyelids. Karate Kurt has kids push the drugs for him, kids in his karate class. He gets them hooked. In two years, he’ll wrap his lips around a handgun—later, Boca Brad will do the same—and I’ll smile both times I hear the news.

Addison picks me up and drives me to school, popping her gum and chomping on about The Senior and how I should stop putting out for free rides to the mall. You’ve got quite a name for yourself these days, she says. Kinky Chinky. Remember when you were Queera? When you only hung out with the fat girl?

You gave The Senior a hand job last week, I say.

I didn’t do it for a ride.

Fuck off, I say. I hate Addison, but we’re friends because people expect us to be.

The day goes on like any other day. I cheat on my history exam using an answer sheet rolled up under my pen cap; I get another talking to from my English professor, who says she knows I’m not an idiot but I sure act like one. “Gregor Samsa can blow me”? Really?

The Senior drives me to work after school. He reaches between my legs, but I tell him no; I’m on my period. Instead, we talk about some holiday rager coming up. You going? What’ll you wear? And, You think you’ll apply to college?

Nah, I say. I’m not smart like that.

I change out of my uniform and into my work clothes in his backseat. I spray the coconut.

My mother calls again, in the middle of my shift. She sounds worse than she did this morning. She’s crying by now—I can’t make out her words.

Chicken, is what I understand. Made chicken. Need sleep.

So go to sleep, I say. Eliza will drop me off soon.

But I don’t want Eliza to drop me off soon. I want Eliza to drive me all around town, and I tell Eliza this. I want her to buy me as many packs of cigarettes as I can afford, and a bottle of anything, and I want us to talk, the two of us, in her car, on the beach, anywhere. I want her emo music turned down low on the radio as I tell her what my life’s been like; I want to tell her about Nelle and Harley, about The Senior; I want to tell her that once, I could have been an Olympic athlete, or a jockey. Once, I even liked writing stories. I want to talk to her until my mother wakes up. I want my father. Most of all, I don’t want to go home.

Instead, we drive around until ten thirty P.M. talking about guys, before Eliza says, I do have to go home, you know. I’m tired. You good?

Sure, I say. Of course.

Tell your mom I say hi, she says. Your mom’s the bomb.

She’ll like that, I say.

I look at my house: the fountain trickling near the entrance, the ginger plants that ooze fragrant juices when you squeeze them, the royal palms, the white stones and smooth wooden fence. It looks beautiful like this, peaceful even. Like my mother brought a small piece of Hawai?i here with her. My home.

Inside, all the lights are off. I flip on the kitchen switch and watch cockroaches skitter across the counters, into the spaces between the crusty stove coils. Shoo shoo, I say, ignoring them, making my way to the fridge for a drink.