Girlchild (8 page)
I
pluck Dennis’s flowers from the shelf, one by one. I hold them when I sleep to keep my mouth shut tight, but in the morning my mouth is red from the Truck Stop’s cheap toilet paper, which is good at folding into the shape of a rose but hard on soft skin. I pick another flower to hide the red and carry it all day.
pluck Dennis’s flowers from the shelf, one by one. I hold them when I sleep to keep my mouth shut tight, but in the morning my mouth is red from the Truck Stop’s cheap toilet paper, which is good at folding into the shape of a rose but hard on soft skin. I pick another flower to hide the red and carry it all day.
I
’ve been keeping my mouth shut but this morning the silence isn’t my fault. There’s no school today and no Grandma’s either because snow snuck down quiet and deep last night, buried the roads and our front porch and there’s no driving until they’re cleared. No matter what, I haven’t told Mama anything because the Hardware Man said not to, and even though he’s gone I know he meant it. And I’m not telling her now because I don’t want to start an avalanche, don’t want to shake all that we’ve built up out from under us, send us sliding back to where we started. If she thinks everything’s all right, everything is all right, and so I keep the words in but they curl tight in my throat and under my tongue and sprout out of my lips like bean sprouts twisting up from the egg cartons on Grandma’s windowsill. I keep holding my hands over my mouth, watch TV over my fingers, go to bed with both hands under my nose in case one falls away and the truth comes pouring out in my sleep, but I must have Grandma’s green thumb too because red blossoms around my lips, and when I wash the red skin off the new skin grows back too fast to hide and the new red speaks louder than the words I won’t say no matter how much TP I hold over it. I stay in the dark and talk down to the linoleum, hide behind books and under the covers, but the secret climbs up like tomato vines until this slow morning with time to spare and early light. Mama grabs my chin with one hand and
spills her coffee cup all over the dining room table with the other. “Rory Dawn, what is wrong with your mouth?”
’ve been keeping my mouth shut but this morning the silence isn’t my fault. There’s no school today and no Grandma’s either because snow snuck down quiet and deep last night, buried the roads and our front porch and there’s no driving until they’re cleared. No matter what, I haven’t told Mama anything because the Hardware Man said not to, and even though he’s gone I know he meant it. And I’m not telling her now because I don’t want to start an avalanche, don’t want to shake all that we’ve built up out from under us, send us sliding back to where we started. If she thinks everything’s all right, everything is all right, and so I keep the words in but they curl tight in my throat and under my tongue and sprout out of my lips like bean sprouts twisting up from the egg cartons on Grandma’s windowsill. I keep holding my hands over my mouth, watch TV over my fingers, go to bed with both hands under my nose in case one falls away and the truth comes pouring out in my sleep, but I must have Grandma’s green thumb too because red blossoms around my lips, and when I wash the red skin off the new skin grows back too fast to hide and the new red speaks louder than the words I won’t say no matter how much TP I hold over it. I stay in the dark and talk down to the linoleum, hide behind books and under the covers, but the secret climbs up like tomato vines until this slow morning with time to spare and early light. Mama grabs my chin with one hand and
spills her coffee cup all over the dining room table with the other. “Rory Dawn, what is wrong with your mouth?”
I want to tell her the truth because her eyes are wet with it anyway, but her hand stays strong as iron around my chin, and the truth will be too loud for the soft clean snow pushing up against the window, too dirty, and so I only tell part of it, the part that she already knows from looking at me, “Just scabs.”
It is the stupidest lie I ever told, because I’m crying so hard there’s no way I’m honest, and now Mama’s crying too. Her eyes shine brown and bright and it’s scarier than any screaming fit she’s ever thrown. She doesn’t cry like me at all, her face doesn’t crumple or splotch. Mama sits still and straight and starts talking in a low voice about heaven, hell, and the Hardware Man, and that’s when I know I fucked up. I must have said something because she knows.
They grew fast under my fingers that won’t stop picking and tearing at skin whose redness reminds me of hot breath and stubble, and then it comes to me that “Just scabs” are the first words I remember saying since school started this year that weren’t to Viv or about her, the first words that aren’t “I feel sick” at Ms. Hyatt’s desk. But maybe I’ve been talking other times. There must be words I’m losing with all the time that gets swallowed in the dark. Maybe words have been slipping out the whole time, too quiet to hear except in my own mama’s ears, and this must be right because she takes my tissue away and hugs me, good and soft and not like metal. She pulls me in like she never does, says words that I’ve never heard, that I can barely make out through tears and held breath and her voice in my hair.
Mama’s “shhhh” sounds clean like cotton and it works away at my apologizing until the morning’s quiet again like she likes it, except this morning for the sound of her voice, the drip of her coffee onto the linoleum. “This is my fault.” Mama’s kisses fall cool on my torn skin and she says it again, “This is all my fault and I’m going
to take care of it,” and then she says “girlchild.” My night name hums in the morning air like the sound of the refrigerator coming on during a scary dream, gives me something to grab onto, something that makes sense, because what she says next sure doesn’t. Mama hugs me harder and her words turn hot as prayers on my neck, her words burn into my skin, “You’re my heaven and hell-flower, girlchild, and you’re gonna grow anyway.”
to take care of it,” and then she says “girlchild.” My night name hums in the morning air like the sound of the refrigerator coming on during a scary dream, gives me something to grab onto, something that makes sense, because what she says next sure doesn’t. Mama hugs me harder and her words turn hot as prayers on my neck, her words burn into my skin, “You’re my heaven and hell-flower, girlchild, and you’re gonna grow anyway.”
T
he hardware man’s house is empty. carol is gone and now i stay at grandma’s when mama is on swing and grave
he hardware man’s house is empty. carol is gone and now i stay at grandma’s when mama is on swing and grave
the hardware man’s house is empty and his truck is gone. and now i go to grandma’s during mama’s shifts and there is nothing wrong with me if i just would stop covering my mouth all the time but under my hands there are scabs but the scabs would go away if i just stopped covering my mouth all the time
i did not say good-bye i did not say anything to anyone but can i go to the nurse and grandma has bag balm in a green tin with red roses and ms. hyatt is soft with me when i ask can i go to the nurse and the nurse is soft too takes my hand down from my mouth holds it in hers when the thermometer makes me cry i want to go home
they stay away from the whole swing set because i’m there and i hold one hand over my mouth and swing with the other hand. i rise away
opening my fist she throws away my tissue gives me a new one from the box and i am hot. i will throw up. the thermometer under my tongue. there are phone calls. mama comes and she is worried but she misses work too much misses too much
the hardware man’s empty house his truck gone carol in it and
me at grandma’s when mama is working swing and grave but when the nurse calls mama comes
me at grandma’s when mama is working swing and grave but when the nurse calls mama comes
i will hold my breath i will throw up i will fall down i will pee my pants i’ll bite the thermometer in half and eat the glass i’ll do whatever nurse needs to pick up the phone and bring mama here.
T
he lights in my head start staying on long enough for me to see that Mama’s forehead is covered with lines and the girls’ bathroom is covered with words. The tiles say
i hate Rory D
. in black marker but I don’t know what the lines on her face say. I don’t know all I’ve missed, what made the Hardware Man disappear, what I did. When I go pee at school my eyes move from the lock on the door to the words on the wall and when I pull the toilet paper I think I hear the door handle moving. When I go to sleep I dream of the alphabet and black markers, but when I’m awake I don’t fucking say anything. I don’t fucking say anything to anyone ever, especially not to Viv because I haven’t seen her since we went to the playground together to swing, since I must have got her in trouble by making her go to the Truck Stop and she probably doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.
he lights in my head start staying on long enough for me to see that Mama’s forehead is covered with lines and the girls’ bathroom is covered with words. The tiles say
i hate Rory D
. in black marker but I don’t know what the lines on her face say. I don’t know all I’ve missed, what made the Hardware Man disappear, what I did. When I go pee at school my eyes move from the lock on the door to the words on the wall and when I pull the toilet paper I think I hear the door handle moving. When I go to sleep I dream of the alphabet and black markers, but when I’m awake I don’t fucking say anything. I don’t fucking say anything to anyone ever, especially not to Viv because I haven’t seen her since we went to the playground together to swing, since I must have got her in trouble by making her go to the Truck Stop and she probably doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.
School is the same, except it’s third grade now, and we are only supposed to write cursive and the letters on the bathroom wall are in cursive too. I write the alphabet in one curling line and my letters bend in a way I recognize, the slash I see in Mama’s notes to Ms. Kohler saying,
Rory still isn’t up to talking much please understand, thank you
. It’s the same slant I see on Grandma’s clippings from the
Reno Gazette
. Her angry scratch in the margins:
Can’t believe this shit!
and
Who gives a rat’s ass?!
My penmanship is pure Hendrix for sure, I bet even my blood runs wrong.
Rory still isn’t up to talking much please understand, thank you
. It’s the same slant I see on Grandma’s clippings from the
Reno Gazette
. Her angry scratch in the margins:
Can’t believe this shit!
and
Who gives a rat’s ass?!
My penmanship is pure Hendrix for sure, I bet even my blood runs wrong.
The toilet paper rolls and I pull up my pants quick when I see that the letters slipping across the tile, wrapping around faucets and pipes, the letters making the words
i hate Rory D
. are Hendrix letters. The slants and slashes, even the little
i
, are all mine.
i hate Rory D
. are Hendrix letters. The slants and slashes, even the little
i
, are all mine.
F
or years I dream of the bathroom door not locking, of toilets surrounded by panes of glass, toilets in the center of the living room, of dirty stalls occupied by strangers, by couples already intimate, of finding a bathroom only to learn that the bulb is burnt out, there is no door, that it would be a far better choice to just go ahead and piss myself. In waking life I resist all euphemisms, especially the diminutive, the
potty
, the
little girls’ room
.
or years I dream of the bathroom door not locking, of toilets surrounded by panes of glass, toilets in the center of the living room, of dirty stalls occupied by strangers, by couples already intimate, of finding a bathroom only to learn that the bulb is burnt out, there is no door, that it would be a far better choice to just go ahead and piss myself. In waking life I resist all euphemisms, especially the diminutive, the
potty
, the
little girls’ room
.
G
randma grew things. Whatever the climate wherever she moved, a garden soon followed after her, tomato seeds went down, a fence went up, and on the Calle I was Grandma’s Chief Gardener. My Chief Gardener’s duties were comprised of deciding which garden hoses felt like snakes to bare feet in the dark pools of slow moving water that puddled in the desert sand too stubborn to swallow it and holding funerals for the birds found dropped dead, exhausted from flying without rest through a land without trees. Discovered by Grandma’s rake and shovel, the birds were buried in the dirt beyond the lot’s edge and Grandma’d stand still long enough to amen my silent prayer over their cardboard coffins.
randma grew things. Whatever the climate wherever she moved, a garden soon followed after her, tomato seeds went down, a fence went up, and on the Calle I was Grandma’s Chief Gardener. My Chief Gardener’s duties were comprised of deciding which garden hoses felt like snakes to bare feet in the dark pools of slow moving water that puddled in the desert sand too stubborn to swallow it and holding funerals for the birds found dropped dead, exhausted from flying without rest through a land without trees. Discovered by Grandma’s rake and shovel, the birds were buried in the dirt beyond the lot’s edge and Grandma’d stand still long enough to amen my silent prayer over their cardboard coffins.
Grandma set me loose on all this make believe, but her work was real. She bent her back before its time, pulling weeds and planting seeds. Whatever Grandma got in the way of surplus food and government cheese was supplemented by something fresh from the ground, ground that she coddled and coerced, encouraged and berated, just like she did me.
Grandma could make things grow in the desert climate, she could read the dirt’s tells, knew if it would prove barren or rich. She watered in the moonlight, and again just before dawn, sweetening the soil with sheer persistence. Mama inherited that ability too, to make things grow in spite of herself, her gladiolas surprising the teachers at Roscoe Elementary spring after spring, and Mama’s and Grandma’s children, some of us grew too.
T
he Hardware Man had worked a disappearing trick. Once Mama and Grandma got to talking again, she followed a nagging worry she’d had, pulled me from Carol’s babysitting shifts, and sent me back to Grandma’s, and as suddenly as she did that, the Hardware Man decided to take a little trip of his own. But when he got back, it was Mama’s turn to work some magic. She had promised to kill anyone who hurt me, who dared to reach those places kept safe by the double knots in bathing suit string, and she may not have kept that promise to the letter but I’m pretty sure she kept it to the number, because soon after the morning of heaven and hellflowers, the morning the scabs on my face told the tale I couldn’t tell, a tale Mama heard clear and true as if both her ears worked perfectly, soon after that, the Hardware Man found himself eighty-sixed. That was the official word, but I’d heard rumors of the truth and I started to put them together.
he Hardware Man had worked a disappearing trick. Once Mama and Grandma got to talking again, she followed a nagging worry she’d had, pulled me from Carol’s babysitting shifts, and sent me back to Grandma’s, and as suddenly as she did that, the Hardware Man decided to take a little trip of his own. But when he got back, it was Mama’s turn to work some magic. She had promised to kill anyone who hurt me, who dared to reach those places kept safe by the double knots in bathing suit string, and she may not have kept that promise to the letter but I’m pretty sure she kept it to the number, because soon after the morning of heaven and hellflowers, the morning the scabs on my face told the tale I couldn’t tell, a tale Mama heard clear and true as if both her ears worked perfectly, soon after that, the Hardware Man found himself eighty-sixed. That was the official word, but I’d heard rumors of the truth and I started to put them together.
The word
molestation
and the phrase
sexually abused
are heard once a year around here, in a short presentation given by Mr. Lombroso as he hands out the pamphlets with the hotline number we’re supposed to call should anyone
touch us inappropriately
, and for the entire eight minutes of his speech none of us looks each other in the eye. But no one has trouble with phrases like
son of a bitch
and
touched my kid
, and I imagine Mama had no trouble looking the Hardware Man in the eye when he got back and she said them. Our authorities may deal with trespasses in their own way, but the
line the Hardware Man crossed is drawn as hard on the Calle as anywhere else. The words carried all the weight of a judge’s gavel, especially coming from my mama, and some of that weight was put behind Calle fists. When the Hardware Man was one fist short of requiring an ambulance, the punches stopped, but the hits kept coming. He soon found he’d lost his regular barstool at the Truck Stop, walked into the bar to find silence, his seat taken, his tab run dry, and not just on Mama’s shift either, because bad news rolls like tumbleweed through the Calle, silent but sticky. Soon enough none of the bartenders, at the Truck Stop or Hobee’s, had what the Hardware Man ordered, if they could remember that he’d ordered at all. The tumbleweed rolled along, and pretty soon after that, the folks down at Ace figured that Sonny could handle the counter by himself. When the Calle took its final turn on him, the man, who was just a man then, with no uniform to hide behind, no counter to look over, no drill bits to catalog, that man used the last speck of sense he had, packed up his home and his daughter, and went to lose himself somewhere else.
molestation
and the phrase
sexually abused
are heard once a year around here, in a short presentation given by Mr. Lombroso as he hands out the pamphlets with the hotline number we’re supposed to call should anyone
touch us inappropriately
, and for the entire eight minutes of his speech none of us looks each other in the eye. But no one has trouble with phrases like
son of a bitch
and
touched my kid
, and I imagine Mama had no trouble looking the Hardware Man in the eye when he got back and she said them. Our authorities may deal with trespasses in their own way, but the
line the Hardware Man crossed is drawn as hard on the Calle as anywhere else. The words carried all the weight of a judge’s gavel, especially coming from my mama, and some of that weight was put behind Calle fists. When the Hardware Man was one fist short of requiring an ambulance, the punches stopped, but the hits kept coming. He soon found he’d lost his regular barstool at the Truck Stop, walked into the bar to find silence, his seat taken, his tab run dry, and not just on Mama’s shift either, because bad news rolls like tumbleweed through the Calle, silent but sticky. Soon enough none of the bartenders, at the Truck Stop or Hobee’s, had what the Hardware Man ordered, if they could remember that he’d ordered at all. The tumbleweed rolled along, and pretty soon after that, the folks down at Ace figured that Sonny could handle the counter by himself. When the Calle took its final turn on him, the man, who was just a man then, with no uniform to hide behind, no counter to look over, no drill bits to catalog, that man used the last speck of sense he had, packed up his home and his daughter, and went to lose himself somewhere else.
It took a long time to sink in. That the Hardware Man’s trailer was empty as a keg at closing time, that the sounds that woke me at night were really only the hands of the clock ticking the hours through, that the shapes the shadows took outside my window were really only Mama’s gladiolas growing up to meet the desert sun. When I finally understood all that, I took a long, deep breath and stopped hiding my mouth from fear of spilling a secret that was already out.
B
ird God. Here is another one of your children that got caught in the jaws of the world and shook hard. She’s dead, a long time ago it looks like, so you’ve probably been wondering where she went. All that’s left under one wing is pink and bone, things we’re not meant to see, Grandma says. Please take her back into your nest and make Bird Heaven stretch ready for her with lots of trees in case her new wings get tired, the ones you’re gonna give her because Grandma says you are. I wrapped her in an orange shoebox by the propane tank. It’s our last shoebox and I chipped my tooth trying for a perfect bow this time. The string snagged between my front teeth and I pulled too hard. I lost my baby teeth already, so if you could fix it before anyone notices, that way I won’t get in trouble and have all the adults popping out their dentures at me asking do I want to look like them. The bow is lopsided but it’s tight, waiting for your scissors to undo it and let her free. If it was up to us, we would’ve let her fly forever, and it’s really mean how you do that, let your creatures get torn apart, feathers everywhere, and don’t ever send enough shoeboxes, and then make teeth so fragile we can’t make things right for saying good-bye. Grandma says you’re never supposed to do that, leave a mess for others to clean up, she has a sign above the stove that says
YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T WORK HERE
and I’m pretty sure this means you too. So if you’ll just take this one more bird home, I won’t tell my grandma on you
.
ird God. Here is another one of your children that got caught in the jaws of the world and shook hard. She’s dead, a long time ago it looks like, so you’ve probably been wondering where she went. All that’s left under one wing is pink and bone, things we’re not meant to see, Grandma says. Please take her back into your nest and make Bird Heaven stretch ready for her with lots of trees in case her new wings get tired, the ones you’re gonna give her because Grandma says you are. I wrapped her in an orange shoebox by the propane tank. It’s our last shoebox and I chipped my tooth trying for a perfect bow this time. The string snagged between my front teeth and I pulled too hard. I lost my baby teeth already, so if you could fix it before anyone notices, that way I won’t get in trouble and have all the adults popping out their dentures at me asking do I want to look like them. The bow is lopsided but it’s tight, waiting for your scissors to undo it and let her free. If it was up to us, we would’ve let her fly forever, and it’s really mean how you do that, let your creatures get torn apart, feathers everywhere, and don’t ever send enough shoeboxes, and then make teeth so fragile we can’t make things right for saying good-bye. Grandma says you’re never supposed to do that, leave a mess for others to clean up, she has a sign above the stove that says
YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T WORK HERE
and I’m pretty sure this means you too. So if you’ll just take this one more bird home, I won’t tell my grandma on you
.
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