Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(48)

Daphne has a grandma in the Florida panhandle, and one weekend we decide to drive up and visit. We drink vodka sodas and puff on joints the whole way, bare feet out the window. Her grandma isn’t home when we arrive, but we’re thrilled to find a tanning bed in the middle of her living room. We strip naked; I climb inside the glass bed and pull the hood down. I light a cigarette and let the buzz drill through me. I ask Daphne to take my picture like this on her disposable camera, the filter slanted out of my mouth, ribbons of smoke glowing under the light, my nipples purpled in UV. I tell her this portrait will be my masterpiece, the photo I want blown up and framed when I die. I will call it Human Cancer on Cancer on Cancer.

Daphne is too mature for boys. They don’t make ’em like they do back home, she says. To hell with these polo and sweater vest chumps. She wants a real cowboy and she tells me so. A man who will spit dip into a plastic bottle. A man who can two-step. I come from big hair and big hearts, she says, not this rah-rah money crap. One night, during a party at my house, I smoke weed laced with angel dust. I hallucinate beetles are digging into my skin; I need to be held down to keep from scratching. A boy named Stratton from math class puts my head in his lap and smooths back my hair. You’re too good for this, he says. Stratton believes in God and I don’t. You’re too smart for this; you could go to college, get straight. Daphne does not approve of this boy, though he’ll be the one to save my life, the first boy to ever love me.

Daphne and I start drinking first thing in the morning, to dull out the throbs. We skip school and sit on my back patio and smoke—tell stories about her first boyfriend (Glenn), my first drum set (a red Pearl), her first road trip (Kalamazoo), my favorite nostalgic smells (strawberry gas mask, hotel sheets, Vegas casinos, pine). We only sit down with the past.

I think before I was born, before this life, I was an artist, she says.

I dab out my cigarette.

Once, I was a horse.



I’M STILL HERE

It took my mother ten minutes with a chain saw to get us out of the house. Now she, my Grandma Sitchie, and I are sitting in the lobby of a Marriott, playing cards on the carpet.

Who are you? my grandma says, and what have you done with my curlers?

The hotel rooms surround us in a circle going up and up. Families have set up lawn chairs, mattresses, radios on every floor; they read magazines, leaning into the light. One TV works down here in the lobby, and swarms of people fight over which channel, which star. Right now, it’s disaster coverage—Katrina, Ophelia, Rita, Wilma—the reason we’re all here.

I’m your granddaughter, I say.

My granddaughter’s sweet, she says, seven years old with a bad haircut. I could show you a picture.

I’m still here, I say, shuffling the cards.

Did you know Katharine Hepburn was a dyke? says grandma.

I need some quiet, says my mother. She stands up, moves to the other side of the lobby with a paperback and her mug of tea.

Want to see a magic trick? I say.

Want to get some wine, she says. No magic tricks.

My grandma stands up and walks fifteen feet to the bar in the center of the lobby. It’s crowded over there. She orders a glass of merlot, looks at me, Whaddya want? What’s her face?

I’m okay, I say.

When I became official with Stratton, I swore I’d get clean. I haven’t touched a bottle; I haven’t rolled a joint; I threw away my cigarettes, every last stash. Last week, I lost my virginity to him. We were in his dorm room at the University of Miami, his roommate gone for the weekend, a single candle lit. Usher’s “Nice and Slow” played on repeat, and we kept most of our clothes on. As soon as he pushed his way inside me, I flipped over onto my stomach; I wanted to feel like an animal. I can wear pastel polo shirts and chew Winterfresh gum and learn bedtime prayers and bring his mother tulips, but in that moment I could not put myself away, not once I felt that kind of pain. Blood dripped onto the sheets. Pull my fucking hair, I said.

Stratton kept rocking, gently. He pressed his hands over my back tattoo to cover it, I’m sorry, he said, I can’t with the old you.

My grandma sits back down in her floral, upholstered chair. She has a glass of merlot in each hand. She crosses her ankles. I’m gonna meet myself a fella tonight, she says. What’s your face again? There are so many ways to lose a person. Of all things, this is what I know best.

Every airport is closed. On the one lobby TV, we watch dots of people bobbing through the rushing waters of New Orleans. It’s been the worst hurricane season in history—so many dead, an entire alphabet of storm names—and most of the south will remain without power. I stay up all night and sit by the glow of the TV, trying to find something else. I bite into Sour Punch Straws to keep myself from finding a smoke.

A girl from middle school is here, wrapped in a blanket. Her name is Morgan. The roof of her home caved in, and she’s been here four days.

So what have you been doing since the Craptop years? she asks. What’s new?

I flip through the channels. I make up lies.

Going to college on equestrian scholarship.

Where? she asks.

North, I say. I hadn’t considered the question.

My grandma is curled up on a bench in the lobby with a homeless man. He told her he would get her out of this hotel, this town. He took one look at her earrings and held on.

What else? asks Morgan. She is braiding and rebraiding a piece of her hair, pulling at it, twisting it. Dogs bark through the shadows of the halls.