Crusader (14 page)

Kristin nodded, slowly. She spoke in slow disbelief. "The three of them. And us. And beer. On the beach."

"Yeah. I don't know. Whatever."

Kristin turned to include me. "First of all, I don't do that."

Nina rolled her eyes. "Oh, right. You're too good to do that."

"I'm too smart to do that."

"Okay. So now you're smarter than me."

"I'm too smart to do that. And so is Roberta."

"Roberta?"

"Yeah. She's sitting in the backseat. Remember? You tried to leave her at the 7-Eleven?"

"I didn't try to leave her! I didn't even know she was out of the car." She looked at me in the rearview mirror. "Roberta, I swear I didn't know. I thought you were still sitting there."

Kristin ripped into her. "What else did you think tonight, Nina? Tell us what your great brain was thinking."

"Hey, what are you talking about?"

"Did you really think those guys were buying beer?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that would have been bad enough. That would have been enough for me to want to get out of there. But that's not the half of it."

"What are you talking about?"

Kristin was now speaking to her like she was a moron. "Nina, they keep the beer inside the store. In a big refrigerator. Those guys were outside the store."

"So what?"

"So they were buying dope! Could you possibly not know that?"

"Dope?"

"What did you think those scuzzy guys were doing on the phone? Calling home to their parents?"

"You don't know this. You're just saying this."

"Oh, I don't? I know what happened to me tonight, and now I'm thinking that I was lucky! I can just imagine the rest of it. Those Xavier guys with their drugs, and those scuzzy guys with their guns, and you, me, and Roberta out on the beach. That's how girls disappear. That's how they get killed. That's how they wind up in a swamp somewhere with nothing left to identify them but their teeth."

Nobody said anything after that until Nina finally said, "That's sick."

"That's true."

"No, I mean about those Xavier guys. I don't know any
guys there who are into drugs. That's so low-class, you know? What were they buying, like, crack cocaine?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

We drove on in angry silence. Finally, at Ocean and University, Nina asked, "So, okay, where are we going?"

Kristin told her, "To my house. I'm going to give you a hundred dollars."

"Okay." Nina turned left. Kristin, Uncle Frank, and Karl live in a really nice house in a neighborhood called Alhambra Estates. I think it's really nice, anyway. Kristin complains that they don't have a swimming pool. Uncle Frank complains about everything else.

Nina told Kristin, "Look, I want to apologize. I'm sorry you got hurt. I had no idea things would turn out this way."

Kristin mumbled, "Forget about it. I just want tonight to be over."

"No. It's not over yet. It's not even ten o'clock. My little sister's still awake. No way I'm going to bed. Do you want to come over for a while?"

"No."

"Just for a few minutes. We have to try on the dresses. We have to plan our colors for tomorrow."

The Corvette turned onto Kristin's street. I saw Uncle Frank up ahead, standing by the open trunk of his car. Nina turned sharply into the driveway, startling him in the headlights. He threw something into the trunk and closed it.

Nina waved and called, in her phony voice, "Colonel Ritter! How are you doing?"

Uncle Frank squinted past the headlights, trying to see us. A look of recognition came over his face, and he said, "Hey, girls, how did your shopping trip go?"

Kristin got out, slammed the door, and stomped up to him. She pulled his American Express card from her pocket
and snarled, "I'll tell you how it went. Your stupid credit card didn't work!"

Uncle Frank's face registered hurt—hurt about the credit card, and hurt that Kristin would speak to him that way. He took the card from her meekly and answered, "I'm sorry. It should have worked." He looked over at Nina. "It's not like I don't pay the bill."

Kristin started to let him have it. "It didn't work for four—" But then she stopped herself. I could see her thinking about the money she almost spent tonight. As she finished the sentence, her voice kept losing air, like she was a punctured balloon. "It didn't work for a hundred dollars, and that's what the dress cost. I'm going to go in and get my money and pay Nina back."

Uncle Frank nodded somberly in the headlights.

Now Kristin looked like she was going to cry, and I don't think it was about the credit card. She said, "I'm sorry I yelled like that. I was embarrassed."

"Sure, Kitten. I understand."

Kristin hurried inside. Uncle Frank remained. Nina, in her phony voice, called over to him. "Your place is looking real nice, Colonel."

He answered, "Ah, this whole neighborhood's going to hell—pardon my expression, Nina. We need to find a new neighborhood."

Kristin came right back out and got into the car.

Nina told Uncle Frank, "Yeah, I hear that, Colonel." She threw the car in reverse. As soon as we cleared the driveway, Nina informed me, "Roberta, we're going to drop you off first." The fun was definitely over. Nina kept messing with the radio. She finally turned it off, announcing, "This all sucks. This really sucks."

We pulled up in front of my house to find it dark and
empty. Kristin turned and looked at me. "Where is your father?"

"I don't know. I was with you."

"You shouldn't be going in there by yourself."

"He'll be here."

"Okay. We'll wait until he gets back."

Nina broke in, "Hey, come on! It's bad enough I gotta come back here tomorrow."

Kristin pointed at the house. "It's an empty, dark house."

Nina answered, "Yeah? So what? Every house is an empty, dark house until somebody gets home and turns the lights on. Am I right? So Roberta got home first. So what?"

"So we're not leaving."

Nina asked Kristin, "Do you think I'm never home by myself? Are you never home by yourself?"

Kristin answered, "I've never spent a whole night by myself. Have you?"

"No." Nina turned to me. "Your father's not coming home? What? Is he sleeping with that Suzie chick? Please tell me he's not."

"No, he's not. He's coming home. And I'm getting out of the car now."

I climbed out and started up the driveway. Nina had backed out and was peeling away before I reached the carport. But I heard Kristin yell, "We'll be here at ten!"

I let myself in and turned on the lights. Dad had left a note on the Blockbuster Video bag saying,
Roberta, We'll be back after dinner. Page me if there is any problem.
There wasn't any problem, so I got undressed and ready for bed. I turned on Channel 57.

I perked up when I saw what was on. It was a
Last Judgment
special about the Crusades. A voice-over intoned, "The Holy Land was overrun by the infidels, people who hated Jesus. The
Christian pilgrims who tried to visit the Holy Land were robbed and beaten and murdered. So some brave men of God took up the cross, wearing it on their tunics and vowing to keep it on until the Holy Land was freed."

The clip ended, and I was once again looking into the eyes of Stephen Cross. He told me, "At some moment in your life, God may challenge you to take up the cross. It may not be for a battle with horses and swords, but it may be for a battle just as strenuous, and just as important. Will you be ready? Will you pray with me now to be ready for that moment?"

Stephen Cross then asked me to kneel before the set, so I did. He ordered, "Pray with me now. Any prayer you know, and I know you know one. Everybody knows one. Pray that prayer with me now."

As Stephen Cross closed his eyes, I whispered, "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

A few moments later, Stephen Cross opened his eyes and thanked me for praying with him. It's funny, but I hadn't been scared before I said that prayer. Now I definitely was.

I turned off the TV, went into the bedroom, and lay down. I thought about paging Dad. But instead I turned the hall light on and left my door cracked open. I fell asleep in that twilight, and that's when I had this dream.

Mom was sitting at a folding card table, under a lightbulb that was hanging from a wire. She looked scared. She held out a dollar bill and said to me, "Take this, Roberta, and go get a Slurpee. A cherry one."

I said, "No. No, I don't want one."

She leaned forward. She looked as white as a ghost, like all the blood was drained from her body. She insisted, "Do as I say. Now."

But I wouldn't. I wouldn't take the money. Because I knew if I did, and if I left her, that I would never see her again. We stood frozen for a moment. Then she said sadly, "Roberta, you know the truth. And you know where you have to go."

That's when I sat up, wide awake. I heard Dad's voice down the hall. I listened to him for several minutes. I wanted to go talk to him about the dream, but I didn't. I didn't because he wasn't alone.

Suzie was gone when I walked outside, into the humid dawn, and picked up the newspaper. I ate breakfast, showered, and read until ten o'clock. Then I heard the Corvette pull loudly into the driveway. Nina and Kristin glided through the kitchen door looking like supermodels. They were carrying their garment bags—Nina's from Bloomingdale's; Kristin's from Petite Sophisticate. Their hairdos were already in place, and their faces were already made up. Heavily made up.

Nina's dark brown hair was brushed straight back, and it had a gold comb in it. Dark gold paint on her eyelids swept back across her temples. She looked like Cleopatra from a storybook.

Kristin had her hair curled and hanging down in tight ringlets, like Shirley Temple. She had sky blue paint on her eye-lids, but not nearly as much as Nina. She looked super-healthy, like an athlete or an astronaut.

Nina looked around uncomfortably and then said, "This place is like when I went to Havana to visit my mother's relatives. They lived in houses like this. It was unbelievable." She draped her red garment bag over a kitchen chair. She also had
a plastic supermarket bag with her. She dumped its contents out on the table and said, "Okay, Roberta, sit down. We'll do what we can do."

I sat in a kitchen chair while Nina and Kristin stood in front of me, studying my face. Nina took a handful of my hair. "What do you wash this with, a Brillo pad?"

"What do you mean?"

"Feel this, Kristin. It's like it's not even hair."

Kristin took a handful, too. She said, "Let's start with the volumizing mousse."

Nina said, "Come on, share with us, Roberta. Who does your hair?"

"Hair Cutz. In the mall."

"Uh-huh. And exactly what do you do there? You give them five bucks and say, 'Make me look like a boy'?"

Kristin told her, "Cut it out, Nina."

"No, I really want to know. Hair like this doesn't just happen."

The two of them proceeded to put stuff in my hair and on my face. They worked in silence for a while, spraying and smearing. Finally Nina said, "Hey, you guys, I'm sorry I was acting a little weird last night. I woke up at, like, three o'clock this morning because I got my period."

Kristin said, "I'm surprised I slept okay. I was sure I would have a nightmare, but I didn't. Before I went to bed, though, I took a long shower, until all the hot water ran out. I had to wash that pig's hand off of me."

Nina rummaged through her plastic bag and announced, "Oh no, I forgot tissues. You got tissues in this house, Roberta?"

"No."

"Then what am I gonna use to put this makeup on?"

"How about toilet paper?"

Nina looked up at heaven. She said, "They have tissues in Havana, Roberta. Okay, where do I find that toilet paper?"

Kristin said, "I'll find it," and walked down the hall.

Nina bent in front of me and started to outline my eyes with a green pencil. She said, "So, Roberta, Kristin told me about your medical problem."

"What problem?"

"'What problem'? You've never gotten your period. Right? She said you're like one of those little Olympic ice-skating girls, like one of those gymnastics freaks."

Kristin came back and handed over the toilet paper. She told her, "I'm sure I didn't say it like that."

"Whatever. It's true, though. Right?"

I answered, "It's true that it hasn't happened yet. I don't think that makes me an ice-skating freak, or whatever you're talking about."

"Hey, girl, all I'm saying is that it's not normal. You need to go see a doctor."

"I do see a doctor."

"Yeah? What does he say? Or is it a she?" Nina turned to Kristin. "I have to go to a woman myself."

Kristin agreed, "Me, too."

I said, "The last one I saw was a he. And he asked me about it. About menstruation. And he told me there is a wide range of normality."

"A who?"

"A wide range of normality."

"Yeah? Sounds to me like you got some free advice at the free clinic. They do a lot of that down in Havana, too. But let me tell you something, girl, there ain't nothing normal about it. Not at your age." Nina stopped penciling and pulled back. "How old are you?"

"I'm fifteen."

Kristin added, "She's almost sixteen. Next month."

Nina went back to work. "Roberta, you need to get yourself a real doctor. One real female doctor that you keep going back to." She stood up and said, "All right. That's it. You're done. You're looking the best you're ever gonna look."

Kristin held up a compact mirror for me. My hair now rose up around my face and fell back, a darker shade of brown than before. My eyes shone out from the eyeliner like dark glass. I didn't look like Cleopatra. And I didn't look like an astronaut.

No. I looked like my mom.

Dad chose that exact moment to come out. He started to say something to the girls, but he caught sight of me and stopped still. For a long, freaky minute, he stood there looking at my dead mother, at his dead wife. An emotion flickered in his eyes and twitched at the corners of his mouth. It looked like fear. Then he turned, without a word, and walked back out of the kitchen.