The Girls I've Been(58)

One day stretches into night, and she’s still not back. I stay awake waiting for her as long as I can, panic and sleep finally getting the better of me around 3:00 a.m. The next thing I know, something heavy’s being thrown on the foot of my bed. I jerk awake just in time to see her toss another bag of clothes down.

“Up,” she says. “Bathroom. We’ve got work to do.”

I blink at the Nike bags, and then she claps sharply and I’m scrambling up—away, far away from the bags and what they represent—and toward her, because where else would I go?

She hums as I trot into the bathroom, and when she begins to brush my hair in front of the mirror, my skin crawls. It should lull me, but the last two weeks of her dodging me has made me needy, desperate for her attention, unable to settle in the scraps of her presence. And the last two months have made me skittish in a way she didn’t raise me to be. I’m supposed to be accessible. My hair is hers to choose, just like my clothes, my name, and my future; nothing on my body is mine. My body doesn’t belong to me.

Nothing does.

She sections off my hair, drawing a ruler-straight part down the middle of my head. She begins to braid, tight and efficient, and she won’t meet my gaze in the mirror.

Can she not look at me? Am I that horrible?

Mom secures each plait with a little plastic tie, reaching forward to pluck the bobby pins from the pile on the counter. “I’ve reserved a court each afternoon this week at the club,” she tells me as she winds the braids around my head, pinning them in place. “I haven’t had the time to research any possible targets. So this will be a good lesson for you: how to spot the right one, then how to bring him to me. What do I say about hardship?”

“It makes you better, if you’re smart.”

She tucks the end of the braids behind the plaits, pinning them tight.

“Our last job,” she says. “It was a mistake.” And for a moment, my heart leaps, and then she crushes it. “You’ll prove to me you’ve learned from your mistakes, won’t you, baby?”

It hangs there: my mistakes.

The shame barrels out of the box I put it in, her confirmation that of course it was my fault. (It’s not, it’s not, but I don’t know that then, because she tells me it is, right then and there, she cons me into thinking it because it’s easier for her.)

“Yes,” I croak out.

She finishes my hair, her hands settle on my shoulders, and finally, for the first time in weeks, she meets my eyes in the mirror. It makes me sick. It makes me joyful. And her next words send relief rushing inside me so fast I’m dizzy enough to grip the sink.

“Ashley,” she says. “Your name is Ashley.”

“Ashley,” I repeat, because I have to be dutiful. Katie wasn’t, and look what happened.

She smiles. “There.” She smooths my too-tight braids. “Isn’t that better?”

I nod. Of course I do.

I want so badly for it to be true.



* * *



—

I spend a whole week sweating on the tennis court at the country club she’s using as her hunting ground.

She is Heidi this time, to my Ashley. My skull aches from Ashley’s hair, the milkmaid braids pinned close to my scalp with too many pins. Ashley is homeschooled, all focus and drive and Nike gear. Wimbledon by seventeen, Heidi tells the parents at the club, even though that’s ridiculous. I’m an okay tennis player, but there’s only one thing I’m a prodigy at.

I perform like the dancing bear I am, my guilt that we’re in this situation heavy as a rock in my belly. But every time I slam the ball over the net, my body sings like it’s something close to mine. It’s almost good. It’s nowhere near enough. I try to pretend it is.

She sits on the sidelines with her knitting and her pristine silk shell and skirt and her sunglasses, like she always does. Men approach her on the sidelines throughout the week as I practice my volleys, introducing themselves to the fresh meat at the club. She smiles and tosses her hair, but her attention slides back to me immediately. She’s not interested in the kind of man who approaches her first; she wants one whose focus is on both of us.

I’m realizing how boring all the prep work of finding someone to lay a trap for is, because I’m feeling all kinds of impatience as we head into a second week of me at the net, against that ball machine that rattles every two balls. The swish, swish, rattle makes me twitch. When I miss four balls in a row, I let out a frustrated noise.

“Don’t let it get to you, baby,” my mother calls encouragingly.

“It’s annoying,” I complain. “Can we see if someone can fix it?”

“Everyone’s gotta push through distractions,” she reminds me. “Try to make it work for you.”

She shifts her sunglasses to her head before going back to her knitting. It’s a signal: Someone’s watching us. I need to keep on the objective. All I’ve been doing for the past week and a half is lifting things from people’s wallets, because the cash Mom has won’t last us forever. Especially with the way she spends.

I keep at my volleys, and the third time I miss in twenty minutes, I drop the racket, my mouth twisting.

“Hey now, don’t pull a McEnroe on me,” she calls.

“That’s a super-dated reference, Mom,” I inform her, and she tosses her head back and laughs in that way that tells me whoever she’s got her eye on, he’s watching.