Break the Skin (5 page)

I saw the lights on in the trailer windows, heard the muffled sounds of televisions, the thump of the bass on a CD player, a woman’s laugh, a dog barking, and I thought of all of us in those trailers we called home and how sometimes a fight would break out and soon there’d be men outside swinging fists; or in the middle of the night, I’d hear a bottle break, the roar of a car engine, gravel spraying the side of our trailer. I thought of ragged lives and how you never knew the ways they might rub up against you, or what would happen once they did.

There’d been a time not long ago when some nights the trouble brewed up in our own trailer. Delilah had that boyfriend, Bobby May. A no-account man. Trouble from the word go. He’d even spent time locked up in Vandalia for burglary. It didn’t matter to Delilah. She swore
she was in L-U-V. Even when he drank too much. Even when he stole money from her. Even when he laid a fist to her face. One night, though, he went too far. He came at her with a stiletto knife. She’d called him out for stealing from her purse and he’d gone off, saying she was a lying bitch, sending her running out of the trailer and up the street. I ran with her. We held hands and ran as fast as we could. It was still winter, but we’d had no thought of grabbing coats. The cold burned my throat and lungs. We ran all the way to the police station, where we gasped for air and panted out our story. “Boyfriend … drunk … knife.”

The police went looking for Bobby May, but he was long gone. Drunk as he was, he figured out that he couldn’t afford to be arrested and sent back to Vandalia. He just up and went, and we didn’t know where he was. For a long time, Delilah was sad. “He was just drunk,” she kept saying. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Finally, I had to tell her the truth of the matter. “Good riddance,” I said. “He was no kind of man.”

She sniffled a little. “He was
my
man.”

“He would’ve ended up killing you,” I said. “He’s gone. Now, build a bridge and get over it.”

It wasn’t long before she bought that Taurus .38. She was a different woman after that mess, a little harder in the heart. “No man’s ever going to pull a knife on me again,” she said when she showed me the .38. “Next time, I’m not running anywhere. I’ll have the answer right here.”

Then Rose moved in with us. We had that double-wide trailer, one of the few in the park, and Delilah and I were glad to have help with the rent. The trailer had fake stone skirting around the bottom meant to make it look like it had a real foundation. The nicest thing, though, was the cedar-stained deck out the front door with latticework privacy screens around it.

I expected I’d see a light on in the trailer that night when I walked home from the South End. I expected Rose would be up fretting over Delilah and Tweet, but the trailer was dark. The only light was the bulb
outside the front door, the one that lit up the deck and the latticework. I could hear the wind chimes Delilah had hung tinkling in the breeze.

I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, letting my eyes get used to the dark. I could smell us in that trailer, all our sprays and lotions and perfumes, as if smell alone would be enough to snag us a man. Rose’s Song of India Patchouli, Delilah’s spicy Euphoria, the cotton candy of my own Prince Matchabelli, the first scent Mother bought me and the one I still used.

It was so quiet in the trailer I could hear the clock on the living-room wall humming. I felt my way along that wall to the little round table by the window. I switched on the lamp that Delilah kept there and saw Rose’s Dingo boots kicked off by the couch. I listened for some sound of her, but there was nothing.

I picked up the boots and moved down the hall to her room. The door was closed, and there was no strip of light in the small space below it. “Rose.” I tapped on the door. “It’s me.”

“Go away.” Her voice was dull. I heard her bedsprings creak, and I imagined she was rolling over, turning her face to the wall. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m sorry about tonight.” I laid my cheek against the door, as if that would somehow let her know how badly I felt. “I should have come outside with you.”

“I don’t want to talk about tonight.”

“Rose.” I hoped she’d let me in so I could give her a hug.

“I mean it, Laney.”

Her voice had a hard edge to it. I didn’t know what else to say. “I’ve got your boots,” I told her.

Maybe that would bring her to the door. Maybe if she opened it, she’d see in my face how sorry I was. Maybe we could be a comfort to each other because I could tell we were now going to be the ones alone. Delilah was busy with her new fella, and not likely shy about running her good luck up the flagpole. The next morning, she’d give Rose a hug
and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I really think he’s the one. My dream man.” And Rose would grit her teeth and say, “I’m happy for you, Dee. I really am.”

But as I waited for her on the other side of that door, all she had to say was, “Scuffed-up old boots. Throw them in the garbage for all I care.”

“They just need a little polish.”

“Oh, really, Laney,” she said with disgust. “Please.” Her voice cracked a little. I knew she didn’t mean to be sharp with me. I knew the best thing to do was to leave her alone.

“Good night,” I said, but she didn’t say a word in reply.

SO IT WAS LIKE THAT
for a while—Delilah crowing about her lover boy, while Rose and I put on our best smiles and pretended we were happy for her. And really I was, on account of she’d gone through so much with Bobby May and she deserved a good man in her life, but I was also jealous—I’ll admit that—a little jealous that she’d claimed Tweet, and a little jealous that she was spending more time with him and less time with me.

Then one night, the bowlegged man with the derby hat showed up at Walmart. I was restocking plastic bags on the carousel at the end of my checkout line when I heard someone say, “You’re that girl.” I looked up, and there he was, smiling at me. I thought the gap between his upper front teeth was the cutest thing. He let his smile get bigger. “That girl who sang with Tweet.”

“You were with the band.” I thought that would make him feel good to hear me say that, but he just shook his head. He took his hat off and twirled it around on a finger. “Not now,” he said. “Tweet said I couldn’t hang around anymore. He told me to take a hike.”

“How come he did a mean thing like that?”

“Guess you’d have to ask him.” He put the derby hat back on his head and put out his hand. “I’m Lester,” he said. “Lester Stipp.”

I took his hand in mine, and I was surprised by how soft his skin was, not roughed up with work the way so many men’s hands were in this part of the world. Lester Stipp’s hand was smooth and warm, and I can’t deny it gave me a good feeling inside to have him touch me.

“Laney,” I said. All of a sudden I was incapable of talking in complete sentences. “Elaine, really. Full name Elaine MaryKatherine Volk. Always called Laney.”

“I like it.” He smiled again. “Laney,” he said, trying it out. He said it like it was the most wonderful name in the world. “It doesn’t try too hard.” He ducked his head, turning shy. “It’s just enough pretty.”

We had an awkward moment then, when neither one of us knew what to say. I got busy for a while with the plastic bags. He whistled a little nonsense tune under his breath.

Finally, he said, “Well, then. You think they got any jobs around here? Any work I could do?”

“You’d have to ask the manager, Mr. Mank.”

Just then, as if I’d called him, I heard Mr. Mank say my name. “Miss Volk.” I turned around and saw him pointing a finger to my register. “You have customers.”

Sure enough, while I’d been talking to Lester Stipp, an old woman wearing her hair in curlers and a man with a big square bandage on his forehead had steered their carts into my line and were waiting patiently for me to notice them.

“Sorry, Mr. Mank,” I said.

Mank was a scrawny man whose shirt collars were too big for his neck, and his ears stuck out from his narrow head. He had a thin mustache that looked like he’d drawn it on with an eyebrow pencil, and one time I caught him in the break room, leaning into the mirror and clipping stray hairs with a little pair of scissors. He used gel on his stringy black hair, sweeping it up from the sides so it met in a spiky ridge in the center. That was his attempt to look up-to-date, but on Mr. Mank, that
hairstyle made him look like an old man trying too hard and it was just sad, if you want to know the truth.

“You need to pay attention, Miss Volk.”

He gave me a hard look and then turned on his heel, hitched his khaki pants up his bony hips, and marched down the aisle. I watched him until he took a turn and disappeared into Hardware.

When I turned back, Lester Stipp was gone, leaving me to recall his smile, and that gap between his front teeth that was so adorable, and the way his hand felt when it touched mine.

“You remember that bowlegged man?” I said to Delilah at our three a.m. “lunch” break. It was just the two of us in the break room; the others who had break at that time were already done and either out on the loading dock smoking or back to work on the floor. She squinted and looked at me as if she had no idea who I was talking about. “Derby hat?” I said.

“Little fella.” She nodded her head. “Tweet said he was stealing from the band, pocketing money when he sold T-shirts and CDs. You know, like that.”

I didn’t want to believe her. “He seems like he’s a nice man.”

“You see him again?”

“Tonight. He was here looking for a job.”

“Looking for something to steal is more like it.”

“Maybe Tweet doesn’t have his facts right.”

“Now, Laney. Why would Tweet make up something like that?”

I looked away from her, and I guess for just an instant, the hurt I felt must have come into my eyes, and she said, “Wait a minute. Oh, don’t tell me. Little Bit’s after a man?”

“Don’t call me that. I’m more than a little bit.”

“Sure you are, Laney. More than a little bit in love.”

I tossed the last of my sandwich into the garbage can. “That man’s short,” I said, “and he’s older than me. Probably ten years at least.”

“Ah, Laney, I’m just having fun. You go get that fella. Why, I bet he’s another part of Rose’s spell.”

The next night, when I came to work, Lester was there collecting carts from the parking lot. He had on one of those fluorescent green reflective vests the cart jockeys wore, and he was wrestling a long train of carts into the store. He gave me that grin again. “Hey, Laney,” he said. “I came back and they hired me.”

We got on right away. He had little ways of making me laugh. He’d come by my register in the dead hours and tell me a stupid joke—
If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
—and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from laughing. He’d be coming in with another train of carts, and he’d stop and give me a big wave, and, always, that gap-toothed smile. Other times, he’d come by and give me a Hershey’s Kiss, or a smiley face sticker, or one of those candy Valentine hearts that said, “Be Mine” or “Kiss Me.” “Just thinking of you,” he’d say.

He was flirty and sweet, and it felt good to be chased after, but, jeez, he was, as I’d told Delilah, at least ten years older than me, and I kept wondering if what she said about him stealing from Tweet’s band was true. All that was enough to keep me on the careful side for a while.

Then, one morning in April, when we were getting off work, he said, “Laney, you want to have breakfast?”

What could be the harm in that? I told him I guessed that’d be all right, and then I went to tell Delilah I wouldn’t be riding back to the trailer with her on account of I was going with Lester to get something to eat.

“You got a date?” she said.

“No, we’re just friends.”

Soon enough, though, we were dating. We never called it that, but when we had nights off, we’d go to Ty’s Buffet for supper or to a movie at the Arcadia Theater. Just hanging out, I guess. We never held hands. We never kissed. I told Delilah all that, but she still insisted that Lester was the man who came to me from Rose’s spell.

“How about that, Rose?” she said one day. We were all sitting around the table.

Delilah told a joke about two bachelor farmers who were looking at the Sears catalog and noticing how pretty the women models were, and how inexpensive, too. “Think I’ll order me one,” the first farmer said. “Tell you what,” said the farmer. “If the one you order is as pretty as her picture, I’ll order me one, too.” A few weeks went by and one day the second farmer said to the first, “Say, did that gal from Sears ever come?” “Shouldn’t be long now,” the first farmer said. “Yesterday, UPS dropped off her clothes!”

Delilah and I had a good laugh about that one, but Rose slapped her hands down on the breakfast table and stood up. “That’s not funny, Dee. You told that just to rub it in, didn’t you?”

“Honey,” I said, “it’s just a joke.”

“That’s right, Rose,” said Delilah. “Just something Tweet told me.”

“You’re making fun of my spell,” Rose said.

Delilah took her by the hand. “Now, Rosie, settle down. I didn’t mean that at all. Looks to me like your spell’s been working out just fine. Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure your fella’s coming.” She should have left it at that, but then she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Or at least his clothes!”

Rose jerked her hand away and stomped out of the trailer, slamming the screen door shut so hard, the little clock on the wall fell off. It was one of those clocks that some folks around here make out of circular saw blades. They paint a background scene on the blade—this one was a beach scene with white sand and sea oats and driftwood, and then a sailboat on the horizon of the ocean and gulls in the sky above it—and then glue on numbers and rig up a motor and a set of hands on a spindle. Delilah’s mother had done this one specially for her just before she parked her Impala on those railroad tracks, and it was one of the few things Delilah had to remember her by.

She picked it up from the floor. One of the hands had broken when the clock fell. She closed her fist around it and started toward the door.