My Name Is Venus Black(36)

It’s a small plain room. There’re an unmade single bed and a small white dresser with a few scruffy stuffed animals on top. I note a cracked window and a torn screen. The doll with the dyed hair is lying on the bed, and the floor is littered with clothes and toys.

“What a nice room,” I say. “Do you like it?”

“It’s okay,” she says.

I decide to risk her wrath and sit on the edge of the bed without asking. “So what do you like to play?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking around as if the answer might be in view. I pick up Smelly Shelly and absently stroke the doll’s purple hair. “What happened here?”

“Kool-Aid,” she says with a smirk giving way to a giggle.

“Grape?” I ask with a smile, and she nods and smiles back. She has the greenest eyes—like a cat’s. If you fixed the gap in her teeth and cut her crooked bangs, she could be kind of cute.

“Let me show you the rest,” Piper says. I get up from the bed and follow her to the next room, on the right. “This is where Mike and Jackson sleep. I’m not allowed to go in. So you’re probably not, either. But Jackson is leaving, I think. They had a big fight.”

“That’s fine,” I assure her. Uncle Mike must be gay. As far as I’m concerned, this is a good thing, since it means he for sure won’t be hitting on me. The door is cracked open about three inches, and I catch a glimpse of a large unmade water bed with a mirrored headboard. There’s a faint scent of incense or cologne.

Next up is the bathroom. Piper flips on a light, but it would have been better had she not.

I doubt I’ll be luxuriating in bubble baths.

“There’s one other room,” says Piper. “This is the one for sale.”

“You mean for rent.”

“Okay,” she says with a huff. “For rent.” She opens the door to a small room filled with junk. Amid the piles of dusty odds and ends, I notice an ironing board, a skateboard, and box after box of albums. The bed is a single with no headboard, and the mattress looks worn, but at least it’s not pee-stained.



The room doesn’t have a window. Seriously, it’s everything I never wanted in a room.

I can feel Piper studying my face. “This is great,” I lie. “Once it gets cleaned out.”

“I can clean it!” Piper declares, clearly motivated. “I can help Mike or Jackson do it.”

“That’s great, Piper,” I agree, not meeting her eyes. “If I take the room, I’m sure we can spiff it up in no time.”

“I can tell you don’t like it,” she says accusingly.

“I like it just fine,” I lie again.

I head back downstairs, Piper at my heels. “But, wait!” she says with excitement. “I didn’t show you the kitchen.” As if it will make all the difference. I follow her through an old-fashioned alcove, past a small dining-room table covered in clutter, and into the small kitchen. The linoleum floor is cracked but clean; the cupboards are metal and half of them are open.

Piper must suddenly see the kitchen with fresh eyes. “Well, I guess it’s a little messy and stuff,” she blurts out.

“But I love the chairs!” I exclaim. The chairs at the kitchen table have chrome legs and red vinyl seats that sparkle. They’re fun in a fifties retro kind of way.

Piper looks at the chairs uncertainly.

“And look at that. You have so much light in here.” It’s true. Big windows above the sink and a sliding glass door that leads outside let in a lot of sunshine.

“I’m sorry I called you a hooker,” Piper says. In this light, her eyes are a muddy green. I think of alligators.

“You didn’t think you’d ever see me again, did you?”

She shakes her head and puts her finger in the gap where her front tooth is missing. It hits me then that it had to be an adult tooth that got knocked out, because she’s too old for it to have been a baby tooth.



“Let’s just pretend today is the first time we ever met,” I suggest.

“Okay,” she agrees.

By now I worry I’ve gotten her hopes up too much. I don’t really want this room and I don’t want to be her babysitter. I wonder if she even realizes that’s part of the deal. At least a few hours of every day, I would be “the boss of her.”

From the kitchen I head back to the living room. “Tell your uncle Mike that Ve—Annette came by. I’ll call him about the room.”

“Okay,” she says. “Are you walking?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have a car?”

“No.” I can tell she’s disappointed.

“How do you go places?”

“Sometimes I might take the bus. But mostly I walk.”

“Oh,” she says, chewing the thumbnail on her right hand.

“So, maybe I’ll see you sometime soon,” I say, moving toward the door. “Thank you for showing me the house.”

I’m already stepping onto the porch when Piper says to my back, “You’re not even going to come live here, are you? You are just acting like you are.”

Mother of God, I wish she were right.



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