In Her Skin(9)

I accept the pills and toss them back. She hands me a paper cup of water, but I’ve already swallowed. Smiling softly from the side of her mouth, she leads me back to the bedroom, where I am finally alone. As I drop another street kid’s clothes, light bounces at the window. I pull on the robe, creep to the window, and look down. The story of Vivienne Weir’s return is making the eleven o’clock news. A woman stands before the Lovecrafts’ brownstone, holding a mic next to a News 5 truck with a spiral cable running up a pole. I shove the window up, sleeves flopping, and I hear her talking, but I can’t make out her words over cars zooming to beat the light at the corner of Dartmouth and Commonwealth. With luck, the reporters will move on, and I will be embraced by this over-the-top house and the arms of my new well-groomed parents who ooze love and maybe you, Temple, will come to love me, too. The edges grow soft, and I hear the water running across the hall, and it’s been a year since my baths didn’t involve a restroom and mealy paper towels, and you can’t pay for this kind of white noise. I tiptoe from my room. The Lovecrafts talk excitedly in their bedroom below, probably because they saw the news truck. I don’t want to wake you, who, as the drug moves through my bloodstream, seem less threatened by me and more curious. Catlike. I slip into the steamy bathroom, shut the door with a soft click, drop my robe and close the faucet.

The water is heaven. Under these bubbles floats my own filth, but I don’t care, because the bubbles smell like apples and I am good. I didn’t know how tight my muscles were from sleeping on the cardboard box with the egg-crate pad, and then not sleeping, because some nights sleeping in Tent City isn’t the best idea, some nights it’s better for you to take turns sleeping while one person stays alert, listening—don’t think about Wolf—and sometimes instead of sleeping, you both get up and walk until the sun rises, across town, to the Charles and along it. Above your head, the tree branches hold moonlight, and underneath, the path sparkles, and in the river, the light from Cambridge shimmers across black ripples—don’t think about Wolf—and he rests his arm across your shoulder, and you wonder if he might be enough family for you.

I hold my breath and slip below the water. Let my hair bloom, let the warmth loosen my jaw. Don’t choose to remember, Jolene. Choose to enjoy. After all, it may not last. Make the most of this tub and that bed and this drug.

A mean thought cuts through my Ativan haze, straight out of a bad TV movie, of a hand holding my head under the water. I break the surface, gasping. I feel frantically for the robe on the floor and hold it over my face for a second, then two.

When I drop the robe, the door is cracked open.

I step from the tub covering my privates best I can and press the door shut with my elbow. Naked and dripping, I clear a circle in the mirror with my knuckles. Great black pupils. Slicked hair. Vulnerable. The girl in the mirror looks frightened by her own imagination. The girl in the mirror looks high. The girl in the mirror looks alone.

I smile close-mouthed. “Pervert,” I whisper, in case the peeper was Slade and he’s still lurking.

No matter. The Slades of the world do not concern me. I have a family, and that family has my back. I section the front of my wet hair and braid it, tucking the braids over my ears. Raise my shoulders until my collarbones make hollows. Lift my chin.

As Vivi’s skin grows over mine, I will slip inside the Lovecrafts. I will slip inside the Lovecrafts. I will slip inside.

Now the girl in the mirror doesn’t look so alone.

*

In Immokalee, a wren flew into our house and got itself trapped. Momma and I tiptoed around it for days, leaving it seeds and a Dixie cup of water. Here, I am the wren. It’s like the Lovecrafts think loud noises or too much bustling around might scare me away. I have been left nearly alone for my first full day, except for meals. Mr. Lovecraft talks on the phone in his office and Mrs. Lovecraft pretends to do things on her laptop in the kitchen, but her main job is running interference between you and me. The Lovecrafts have explained that “chilling” at home today is best, because we are “under a microscope.” This feels true and not true. Besides the reporter last night, the street is full of rushing people who don’t know us and don’t care.

I shift to wake my legs, tucked underneath me in my hallway window seat high above Commonwealth Ave. The book on my lap crashes to the floor. The book is a prop, because Vivi would occupy herself by reading politely. I don’t read, because reading would distract me from hearing you and your parents—our parents—whisper.

You laugh from below. Not a nice laugh: a “ha.” A challenge.

More whispers; harsher tones. I grab a pillow and curl it into my chest.

I do not like this strange quiet. I would rather be thrust into acting like Vivi than waiting for something to go down. A juicy snore echoes from behind Slade’s bedroom door, followed by a dreamy murmur that sounds like “more snacks.”

I chuckle loudly.

Downstairs goes quiet. Stupid Jolene. Girls kept in sheds do not spontaneously laugh, particularly when they are alone. To disguise the laugh, I cough, loud and over the top.

Thirty seconds pass. A minute.

The whispers start again.

I exhale and press my hand against the glass. A homeless guy on the corner sells copies of Spare Change News. I’m not close enough to tell, but because I’ve been homeless I know that layers of street crust his pant cuffs. I know his work boots are heavy but not warm. I know his nose is chilled, because Boston gets cold when the sun drops. Momma always ran on the cold side, she said. I run my tongue over my crowded teeth and try not to think on Momma, because no good comes from thinking on the dead. Not Wolf neither, because no good comes from thinking on those you’ve left behind. There is only what lies ahead.