Sisters of the Road (12 page)

“How are we going to get in?” Cady asked.

I’d read you could open doors with a credit card, but had never, before now, had occasion to try it. The lock was weak and my Sears card worked—another small side benefit of the market economy.

The room wasn’t much to look at. There were the cactus plants on the sill and a few rock group posters tacked up on the wall. The double bed was neatly made and a Black rag doll, faded and once beloved, sat on the pillow. There was a small chest of drawers under a mirror; it had a large assortment of eye makeup and fingernail polish on it but not much else. The drawers were empty. Rosalie’s—and perhaps Trish’s—few clothes were hung in the closet or spilled out of a suitcase on the floor. The room had a stale, pathetic odor; two teenage girls, living on their own, one of them working as a prostitute, the other trying to stop. Had Trish supported Rosalie then? Or had Rosalie found other ways to make a living? Dealing dope, stealing? However they’d made their money, they hadn’t ended up with much of it themselves.

Cady looked sad and uneasy. She picked up the Black doll and held it with unconscious longing. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

I shook my head. Maybe just a sense of Trish and Rosalie, a feeling for their life here. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything to explain why Rosalie had died or why Trish was missing. Nevertheless I started looking through the clothes. There were T-shirts and underwear mostly, a few socks and stockings, a pair of Levis and a couple of sweaters. I went through the closet and found some fancier clothes: a red rayon dress, a kimono, a hanger full of cheap necklaces. Dress-up, play-acting clothes.

The last thing I did was take the blanket off the bed to reveal the faded, stained sheets, and run my hand between the mattress and box spring, where I hit something hard. I’d been looking for drugs; what I found was a diary with a broken lock. It was the padded, girlish kind that conjured up sweet secrets and emotional outpourings. I’d had one myself when I was thirteen—a yellow one for me, a blue one for Penny.

“I’ll take this,” I said, and put it into my bag. “I guess we can go now.”

But before we left, I took one thing more: a tiny, silver-gray cactus in a ceramic pot. Cady kept the doll.

“I
FEEL LIKE KILLING MYSELF
,” the diary began. It was in November, over two years ago, when Trish was thirteen, in the eighth grade. “I don’t have any friends. Yvonne was my friend but she moved away. All my teachers except Mrs. Smith hate me, she said I wrote a good paper for English. It was about Nagasaki, a book I read. It made me feel so bad to know what we did in the war to the Japanese. I hate people, especially Rob. Now he has been married to Mom six months. At first he pretended to be nice, he said he would teach me to play softball, but then he said I was getting too old. I guess Mom told him I got my period. I hate my Mom how she is around him. She and I used to get along and talk and everything. Now he’s here every night the fat slob, he sits watching TV and doesn’t say anything. If I get a bad grade he yells at me. Yesterday he said something mean about my boobs, I can’t help it if they’re getting big. My Mom never says anything. I hate her. I feel like killing myself.”

Outside my apartment the night was quiet and cold. I was drinking tea under the quilt but I was still cold. Ernesto maintained an injured distance on the rocking chair.

“
December 10.
Rob hit me last night, it was the first time he hit me so hard. I forgot to take out the trash this morning and so the trash collectors didn’t pick it up. Big fucking deal. My Mom started crying but she didn’t do anything. She just said Patti why can’t you do what you’re supposed to do so Rob doesn’t have to get angry. Then she said why can’t you be like you were before. She should know. I’m the same as I always was. It’s him that’s the problem.

“I told Heather about it in PE today. She said her Dad hits her too and once he gave her a black eye. She asked if I wanted to eat lunch with her and her friends. Heather is cool, she has a lot of friends and a boyfriend Sam, he’s in high school and he has a motorcycle.”

“
December 26.
I gave Heather a necklace and she gave me a stuffed bear. We went to the park and Sam came over and gave us a ride on the motorcycle. He said he would introduce me to his friend. He gave us some pot. Heather said she smoked it all the time, so I said I did too, but I never tried it before. Her parents were gone so we went back to Heather’s house and got high. First I didn’t feel anything then I felt dizzy. I pretended I liked it though. We made brownies because we were hungry. I came home late and Rob slapped me.”

The first entries were in a large, well-formed script that got smaller and more sloping as it went on, as if that could help minimize the events. I followed Trish through the eighth grade, through Rob’s beatings and her increasing lack of feeling about them. She seemed to take them for granted and only reported them when they were especially bad, like the time he raised welts on her back. Her grades dropped and she got high more often. Heather’s boyfriend disappeared from the picture, but then the two girls met Jamie and Mark, two boys in the ninth grade, and hung out with them. So far it was a childish diary that was not so different in many ways from what I wrote at her age. In spite of being filled with thoughts about the stupidity of her family and of school, it was unselfconscious and gave no hint of what was to come.

Then, that summer, Wayne arrived to stay with them.

“
June 20.
Wayne and I spent all day talking today while Rob and Mom were at work. He speaks Spanish and has traveled all over the place. He said they tested him when he was a kid and they found out he had an IQ of 180 so his Mom didn’t care if he went to school or not. He’s read everything. I never talked to anybody about books before outside of school. He asked me what I was reading and I told him I was reading
David Copperfield.
We had to read part of that in school and I wanted to finish it. He said he was reading Frowd and Young when he was my age. He said he’d been psychoanalyzed (I looked that word up, also it’s Freud and Jung), and you can tell a lot about yourself from your dreams. They have symbols. A lot of the symbols mean something about your sex life. A woman is a circle and a man is a stick. So if you dream you’re playing ping-pong with someone, the shape of the paddle means you’re having intercourse with them. I didn’t know that.”

“
June 26.
Wayne gave me some books to read. One is named
Fanny Hill.
It’s about a fifteen year old girl in the 18th century who turns into a whore and it’s a classic. It’s written in old-fashioned language that’s hard to understand. So far it’s sad because Fanny is an orphan and has to sell herself to make money. Wayne doesn’t have a girlfriend. He used to but she got boring. She wanted to have sex all the time, she was a nimfomaniac. Wayne said he had sex the first time when he was thirteen with one of his mother’s friends. She was an artist and she was married but her husband didn’t care. He used to watch them. I said that was disgusting. Wayne said it was funny. He said it should be like that, somebody should teach you. He said he likes to have a lot of girlfriends because then you don’t get tired of sex because everybody is different. Freud is one who talks about sex. Jung is more about mythology. Wayne took me to a photographic exhibit of nudes. He said people should love their bodies. I hate mine, my boobs are too big. Wayne said I’d grow into them.”

“
June 28.
Heather called and wanted me to go swimming and then to the mall to meet Jamie and Mark. But I said I didn’t want to. I think Heather is really stupid, she never reads anything and the only thing you can discuss with her is boys. Wayne and Rob got into a fight tonight. Rob said he should be looking for a job. Wayne said he just got to Seattle and he didn’t know his way around yet. I thought Rob would hit him but he didn’t. They watched a baseball game on TV and drank beer. My Mom was upset about something, she went in her room. I think it’s better when Wayne is here, then Rob doesn’t hit me. I am reading
Fanny Hill.
Wayne came in to say good-night and I was reading it. He said my nightgown was sexy. I wanted him to kiss me but he didn’t. I love him so much. I can’t think of anything else.”

“
July 1.
I told Heather I was in love with Wayne and she said it was incest. But it’s not because he’s not my family. She asked if we did ‘it.’ We talked about sex, she used to do it with Sam. If you do it standing up you don’t get pregnant. I asked Wayne but he said it wasn’t true. He said it was too bad there wasn’t more sex education. He asked me if I ever masturbated. I said I did when I read some parts of
Fanny Hill.
Then I was really embarrassed!”

“
July 2.
I went swimming with Heather. When I came back home I didn’t think anybody was here. Then I heard Wayne in Rob and Mom’s room, he called to me to come in. The curtains were closed and he had a lamp on. He was reading one of Rob’s
Playboy
magazines and he was rubbing himself. He asked me if I had ever seen a man’s penis before. I said no, but I guess I saw my Dad’s a couple times. He asked me to rub him up and down. It seemed weird because he had never even kissed me but I did it because I love him. After a while the white stuff came out and he got soft again and talked about books and things. He asked me if
Fanny Hill
had given me any ideas. I said there were a lot of things I didn’t understand, but he said he would explain them. The main thing to remember he said is that sex is fun and people should do it as often as they can. At the end he kissed me. I love him to kiss me.”

“
July 6.
Wayne says he won’t hurt me. Every day except the Fourth of July I rub him. It’s kind of boring except when he kisses me. He showed me the pictures in
Playboy
and explained the jokes. He said the girls have hair down there but they brushed it out for the pictures. He asked if he could see me down there but I felt stupid because I didn’t look like those girls. Then he asked me to suck him. First it grosses you out but I guess it’s the same as rubbing. It’s weird to see Wayne get so excited but then he says, Baby I love you and kisses me. I hate the taste though.”

“
July 8.
Today we went to a guy Wayne just met named Karl who’s an artist, and smoked some pot, then he gave Wayne some pills. I was bored, I went to the bathroom, when I came back out I heard Karl say, can I have some when you’re through and Wayne laughed and laughed. Wayne says he knows a lot of people who use coke. It’s the best drug but it’s expensive. He’s going to get some from Karl.”

“
July 9.
Today we did ‘it.’ I knew it would hurt because it hurt Fanny Hill the first time, but not that it would hurt so much. I guess I liked it. I like to be close to Wayne. I feel like he’s always going to take care of me and watch to make sure nothing bad happens.”

T
HERE WAS A BREAK AFTER THAT
and when the diary started again it was as if a different Trish were writing, jaded and cynical. She was cutting classes regularly in the ninth grade. She hated all her teachers except Mrs. Horowitz in English. She didn’t have many friends and she didn’t seem to feel too well physically. There were a lot of references to “being out of it” all day, to oversleeping and having her mother yell at her. Some entries seemed to be written under the influence of drugs. They were full of strange thought associations, visions and an obsession with death. She no longer talked of killing herself, but of being close to some self-destructive edge that attracted as much as frightened her.

Wayne was still living at home, but seemed to be increasingly gone from the house. There were a lot of references to “looking for W.,” “W at K.’s house,” “W says he needs to see K.” Was K. Karl or another girl? Trish seemed jealous and miserable. She no longer mentioned kissing, but sometimes went on for paragraphs about how she loved W, dwelling on his hair, his eyes, his voice.

Then, in November, Rob kicked Wayne out of the house. There was a big blow-up and the beatings began again. The difference now was that Trish didn’t passively accept it, but fought back. And she started running away. To W.’s usually. But sometimes W. wasn’t around. He was at K.’s and then at N.’s. Trish ended up downtown looking for him.

New initials began to make their appearance and the entries became more and more cryptic. It appeared that Trish was making dates or keeping appointments.

On January 15, a year ago, she wrote, “Went to K’s. Two guys in exchange for a gram. W. happy. Bought me dinner and told me I should get out of Rob’s for good. Could make a lot of money, get new clothes. Offered to set me up. I don’t know. When I’m high I feel like I could do anything, it doesn’t touch me, but the next day I hate myself. Last week a guy at the clinic told me I had gonorrhea and gave me penicillin. I didn’t tell W. He’s not going to catch it from me until he gives up S.”

A few days later she was in the detention center, picked up for prostitution. She got out the next morning but wrote, “Rob called me a whore. Mom just cried. I didn’t care, I felt like a whore, I really did. I didn’t before I was arrested, I was pretending it was something else. Now I’m not. I never want to go back to school again. I hate them all. I hate Wayne. I’m not going to see him anymore. I’m just going to stay here in my room and rot.”

But she didn’t. She ran away again. Was picked up again. And again. Suddenly she was in a foster home.

“
March 4.
The lady who’s my foster mom says she doesn’t care what I do as long as I come home by eleven. She also said no drugs in the house but she wouldn’t know if I was high, she’s drunk half the time anyway. Yesterday she told me her life story when she was drunk. She got pregnant when she was seventeen and had to leave high school, her first husband ran off with another woman and her second husband just ran off. She has three kids, the oldest one is eleven and already has a record for shoplifting. She doesn’t work and makes her money from foster kids. She told me if I wasn’t careful I’d end up like her. Fat chance. I’d kill myself first.”