Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(65)

Look, says my mother. Look, your favorite.

It’s JonBenét Ramsey on the news again. Here she is, smiling for a camera, my favorite pageant girl. My favorite dead girl. She waves. Flashbulbs sparkle in the space behind her head.

I love her, I say.

Why do you love her so much? asks my mother. It’s very sad, what happened to her. I found her pictures torn out under your bed. What is it?

Because she was raped and murdered, I say.

That’s a very sad thing to happen, says my mother. That’s the most horrible thing that could happen to a person.

What is rape? I ask her, And why is it horrible?

My mother places the hairbrush down on the bed. It’s a deliberate movement for her, careful, slow. She turns me by the shoulders so that I am looking right at her, our faces close.

Rape is when someone forces sex on you, she says. When you have sex without wanting to.

What is sex? I ask. My cheeks are thumping. I think I might get in trouble for this question. It’s a word that is always hushed in school, and my teachers get red and stuttery whenever it’s mentioned.

Instead, my mother rubs her thumb over my cheek and speaks softly. She sways me a little. She breaks down the anatomy, and explains the parts that we have. These parts belong to us girls, she says, but sometimes we can share. She tells me that sex can result in a child. She tells me that it usually does.

But JonBenét’s a child, she didn’t have a child, I say.

That’s why it’s rape, she says, and very wrong.

So sex is when you have sex with a child?

It shouldn’t be.

But this person used a rope on JonBenét, and twisted the rope around her neck, and had sex with her, too, at the same time. Is that how people have sex?

No, that’s why it’s murder, she says.

And rape, I say.

And horrible, and wrong, she says.

Do people usually die after sex?

No—

Does it feel like dying?

Sometimes.

Can JonBenét’s body still have a baby now that she’s dead?

No—

Can children have children?

They shouldn’t.

If I don’t look like JonBenét, will anyone ever want to rape me?

That’s not the right question.

Will I want to die?

SPRING, 1976

GRASSY LAKE, FLORIDA

Over spring break, the family drives to Grassy Lake. It’s the little sister of Lake Placid, Florida—residential, gaping blue. On the lakeshore, wooden cabins with screened-in porches slam their doors in a smashed, metallic symphony as children run in and out, in and out, to the water.

My mother is here. She’s stuck here with Tao, her brothers, and her parents. Her parents speak to each other less and less these days—her father, with his newspaper, his tiny sailboat, his heavy glasses of scotch, and her mother, in the sun, oiled arms wrapped around her knees, watching dragonflies dipping O’s in the water like smoke rings. My mother is just beginning to notice this disconnect, her two parents as people, two people who are very different, indeed.

Let’s move to my mother in her room, in the full-length mirror, tying the frayed strings of a bikini top around her neck. She ties it so tight the knot digs. Her breasts are growing—they need more support—but she hasn’t mentioned this to anyone; right now, her body is still a secret. Today, she’ll sail with her father on his two-person Sailfish, but she feels different this year, his co-captain, the same bathing suit—awkward, even. She pulls her bikini bottom up, up, trying to find a smoother spot near her waistline. Her body is changing—womanly, she thinks—but she does not know what to do with these new twists of muscle, these new hips.

She walks out of her room, back into the patio, and takes a breath before opening the door. She feels the heat of the screen on her palm, pressing, walking out of it, my new body, the door slamming behind her in a crack.

How many times do I have to remind you about that damn door? says her father, as he pulls ropes through the grass toward the boat. Both he and Mei Mei take a look at their daughter, their hiapo girl, copper in the sun, like a woman. Her father squints. Her mother slides bulky, square sunglasses down her nose.

Punahele, you been eating all my sweets? asks her father. Look at that ‘ōpū on those skinny bones.

I’m just changing, says my mother. She folds her arms over her stomach.

No more poi for you, I guess, says my grandma, winking. She knows how much my mother hates poi, the gray sludge of Hawaiian not-quite-dessert. You look fine, she says.

Kulikuli, says my mother in three hard blinks. She marches back into the patio, pushing the door for an extra slam.

That evening, in the shower, my mother decides to move someplace up north after graduation. She wants a place with a pale, chalky sky and winters that hurt, a place where she can wear giant knit sweaters every day, the fabric loose and her body unrecognizable, every last sweep of her skin protected.

SPRING, 2016

PETERBOROUGH, NH; MANCHESTER, VT; VOORHEESVILLE, NY

My mother flies to New Hampshire to pick me up. Her hair is burned around the ears, curled where it has never been curly. She has a new cough from staying in the house too long. She refused to leave without our dogs.

We drive through Vermont and stay the night. On the hotel television, the news reports that new evidence has emerged against O. J. Simpson—they’ve found a knife on the premises. Another channel tells us about a new JonBenét docuseries.