Valentine(39)

Grabbed onto a barbed-wire fence to stop yourself from falling? Victor said when she showed it to him in the hospital. Girl, that’s some army-level toughness. But I fell anyway, she said. Well, don’t tell that part of your story, he said. Tell people you squeezed that fence until the barbs bent flat in your hand.

My story? No. This is not my story.

She squeezes the doorknob of her motel room tight and grips the wrought-iron railing that runs along the second-story walkway. Heart pounding, one hand on the pocket of her shorts where she can feel the knife pressing against her groin, Glory tries to act as if she goes to the pool every day, as if she walks down these metal stairs several times a day, as if she is a normal girl.

She sits on a lawn chair at the far end of the pool, still wearing the Led Zeppelin T-shirt and jean shorts she pulled on over her bathing suit. Before she left the room, she wrapped a bottle of Coke in a white bath towel that rests on the deck next to her feet. She drinks it quickly. For weeks she has been peeking through the curtains, watching the woman she saw swimming on their first night at the Jeronimo Motel. Every day she comes down to the pool with her two kids, a chubby little boy who has his mother’s yellow hair and always wears the same navy-blue swim trunks, and a little girl, long and skinny as a rifle, her freckles and stringy red hair glowing in the sunlight.

Today, when they walk to the shallow side of the pool, the three of them pause and stare briefly at Glory, as if she is trespassing. The little girl lies down on a lounger and opens a thick book, and the boy jumps into the pool with his small collection of things that float—a faded plastic boat, a tennis ball, a blow-up raft that has been patched with several pieces of silver duct tape. The mother paddles up and down the pool a few times and then wraps a towel around her head and puts on her sunglasses before sitting down next to her daughter. Mother and daughter slather baby oil on their legs and arms. They lie back and wait for the sun to turn them pink, bright pink, then lobster red. They wear matching one-piece bathing suits covered with large red and yellow flowers, the girl’s a little too large for her skinny body, the mother’s a little too small.

They might be the homeliest people Glory has ever seen. The boy has a large gap where his two front baby teeth used to be, and the little girl picks at the skin peeling from her sunburned shoulders, covertly putting the pieces in her mouth while she reads. The mother’s arms and legs are round and hairless and pink, like something plucked from a shell.

Glory leans back and closes her eyes until the sun burns her eyelids and the knife grows hot against her skin. She tucks it into the folded white towel, but puts it back in her shorts after a few minutes. As the day grows hotter, she walks to the edge of the pool and lowers the towel into the water, then wrings it out and lays it across her legs, her arms and face.

The little boy paddles his float to the deep end of the pool and hovers next to the edge a few feet from where Glory sits. You got change for a dollar? he asks suddenly, as if he is hiding a bill somewhere in his swim trunks and might pull it out, wadded up and dripping wet, to trade for a handful of coins. Glory looks at him with her mouth open, as if the fact of him, or more particularly, of his voice, has left her stupefied.

Do you speak English? he drawls.

T. J.! You leave that girl alone. The woman jumps to her feet and hustles across the pool deck, large and quick as a parade float caught in a sharp wind. When the towel on her head comes loose and begins to slide down her back, she tosses it on the deck. She moves fast for a woman her size, closing the distance between herself and the little boy and Glory in just a few seconds.

T. J. grins at Glory and pushes his float away from the edge of the pool. Why don’t you get in the swimming pool? he says. Are ya afraid ya might get grease in the water? Afraid your back might get wet? He giggles then, shoving his fist against his mouth as if to stifle the sound. Wetback, he says. He looks like he weighs eighty pounds, and while she can’t really swim, Glory thinks she could probably drown him.

The mother gets down on her hands and knees, stretches her arm across the water, and grabs at his raft. God damn it, T. J., you little shit. You come out of that water right now. She drags the float to the pool’s edge and he is already yowling when his mother reaches down and grabs him by the arm. Standing now, she lifts her son into the air, his arms flailing, fat legs churning madly. Her strength is surprising, and wonderful.

Glory is already on her feet, reaching for her towel and eyeing the gate. She will have to walk past the woman and her son to get to it, or go the long way around the pool, past the little girl who has set down her book and sits laughing on her lounge chair.

Wait, the woman says to Glory. Can you just wait a minute? Red-faced and panting, the woman sets her son on his feet and towers over him. She wraps her fingers around the soft part of his arm and pinches so hard he yowls. You won’t be able to sit down for three days if I ever hear you talking like that again. She tightens her grip and the boy snuffles.

You hear me? She is still holding the soft flesh of his arm.

Yes, ma’am, he says.

Get your ass upstairs and take a nap. Tammy! Take T. J. up to the room—she glowers at her son—he’s tired. Glory thinks for a second the woman has said tarred, her accent is so thick. He’s tarred.

The little girl is on her feet now, holding her book in the air and yelling back at her mama. It’s hot in there and you promised to take me to the bookmobile.

We’ll see, maybe later. Beneath her T-shirt, the woman’s chest moves rapidly up and down. Y’all get to the room now.